Abstract: A method for the determination of 6 components (retinol, retinal, retinyl acetate, retinyl propionate, retinyl retinoate, retinol palmitate) in cosmetics by high performance liquid chromatography was established. The samples were extracted by water-tetrahydrofuran (volume ratio was 2∶8) solution, separated with a chromatographic column of Agilent Extend-C18 (4.6 mm×250 mm, 5 μm), the mobile phase was tetrahydrofuran-0.5% acetic acid solution with gradient elution, and the diode array detecter (DAD) was used to detect the 6 retinoids in cosmetics with the wavelength of 328, 350 and 382 nm. The method exhibited good linear relationship in the range of 0.5~10.0 mg/L with the correlation coefficient R² not less than 0.999 93. The limits of detection for the 6 retinoids were in the range of 0.5~0.7 mg/kg, the limits of quantification were in the range of 1.5~2.1 mg/kg. The three-level spiked recovery tests were carried out in three different cosmetic blank matrices of aqueous, emulsion and cream types, and the recoveries ranged from 91.3% to 107.7%, the relative standard deviation (RSD) were 0.9%~4.7%. The method has the advantages such as simple, rapid, high efficiency, high accuracy, which is suitable for determination of retinoids in cosmetics.