A UV-Vis spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of paraben ester in cosmetics.The sample spectrum was identified by establishing background spectrum library and standard spectral library，and using vector deductible model calculation.The results indicated that the method exhibited a good linearity for paraben ester in the range of 0.25-10 mg/L（r＞0.999 2）.The relative error is less 1.2% and the RSD is lower than 1.7%.The analytical results of the proposed method are similar to those obtained by the HPLC method.The method is rapid，accurate and less reagent-consuming，and could provide a feasible scheme for in situ analysis of cosmetics.