Different strategies for the racemic or enantiospecific total syntheses of plant and mammalian 3,4-dibenzyltetrahydrofuran lignans are reviewed and compared. The multi-step approaches have various key step strategies: Diels-Alder reactions, Stobbe condensations, Michael additions, alkylations, nitrile oxide cycloadditions, radical cyclisations, dianion and oxidative couplings.