Abstract: A simple high performance liquid chromatographic analysis method of tea β-carotene has been developed. Firstly, samples were leached by acetone and reduced in the vacuum rotation evaporator. Secondly, samples were saponified by addition of diethyl ether and methanolic KOH, and allowed to rest for 3h at 4℃ with light excluded, and extracted by 10% NaCl, then the diethyl ether phases were reduced in the vacuum rotation evaporator. Finally, residues was solvated with methanol: ethyl acetate (v:v=1:1). The separation system consisted of a C18 reversed-phase column, a gradient elution system of acetone and water and detection wavelength of 450 nm. While the content of β-carotene ranged between 2.5~100μg/ml, the method showed a good linear relationship between the peak area and content of β-carotene (r2=0.9936) and high reproducibility. The average rate of recovery of β-carotene was 99.2 % and the relative standard deviation (RSD) was 4.5%. Beta-carotene contents of different positional and seasonal leaves of a tea variety Longjing 43 were measured using this method. It can be concluded that the content of β-carotene is higher in mature leaves than in immature leaves, summer and autumn shoots higher than spring shoots.