We report the fabrication and the nonlinear optical properties of Rh-doped BaTiO3 thin films. The films were deposited on SrTiO3 (100) substrates by pulsed-laser deposition. The deposited Rh:BaTiO3 thin films were single phase and c-axis orientation investigated by x-ray diffraction. The films exhibited large nonlinear optical effects, which were determined using Z-scan technique at a wavelength of 532 nm with a laser duration of 10 ns. The real and imaginary parts of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility chi (3) were 5.71 x 10(-7) esu and 9.59 x 10(-8) esu, respectively. The value of Re chi (3) of Rh:BaTiO3 films is much larger than those of several representative nonlinear optical thin films. The results show that Rh:BaTiO3 thin films have great potential applications for nonlinear optical devices.