Objective: To investigate the effect of 18β-glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) on growth of hepatocellular carcinoma cells. Methods: The hepatocellular carcinoma cells (Hepa1-6) and normal hepatic cells (AML-12) were exposed to different concentrations of GA or adriamycin (ADM) for different time periods, after that, the cell growth inhibition and half inhibitory concentration (IC50) were analyzed. Then, after Hepa1-6 cells were treated with GA of an appropriate concentration selected according to IC50 for a certain time period, the cell apoptosis was measured. Results: Low concentrations of GA exerted no obvious inhibitory effects on proliferations of the two types of cells, but had remarkable inhibitory effects on proliferations of them at the concentrations >8 μg/mL, and the effects were increased with the elevation of the GA concentration and time prolongation. All concentrations of ADM showed evident inhibitory effects on proliferations of the two types of cells, and these effects were increased with the rising of the ADM concentration but decreased as time elapsed. The IC50 of GA for Hepa1-6 cells was lower than that for AML-12 cells, and the IC50 difference between them reached a largest value at 48 h treatment, while the IC50 of ADM for Hepa1-6 cells was higher than that for AML-12 cells at any time period of treatment. After treatment with 25 μg/mL GA for 48 h (under this condition, the inhibition rate of proliferation in Hepa1-6 cells was 50%, while in AML-12 cells was only 3.8%), the apoptosis in Hepa1-6 cells was significantly increased, which mainly resulted from early apoptosis (P<0.05). Conclusion: GA can inhibit the growth of hepatocellular carcinoma cells and the mechanism may be related to its inducing cells apoptosis. GA may be safer and has less toxic side effects for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma.