As a comprehensive, quantifiable identification method based on the chemical composition information of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the fingerprint of traditional Chinese medicine has become an internationally recognized effective way to control the quality of natural medicine. Chemical pattern recognition in traditional Chinese medicines is an important breakthrough for the infiltration between fuzzy and pharmaceutical sciences, has been used in the field of quality assessment and control for traditional Chinese medicine. It has solved the problem of comprehensive analysis with multi-dimensional information, and gradually been accepted by more researchers to in-depth study in the further. With the development of modern chemical analysis and computer techniques, there are more technologies were applied to the establishment of fingerprints of traditional Chinese medicine, more chemometric methods have been applied to the data processing of TCM fingerprint, and more quality identification and assessment for TCM to be achieved. And the technology has matured and achieved a lot. In this paper, we make a review for the chemical pattern recognition in traditional Chinese medicines since it be invented, provide a reference for the further research.