Objective To understand the status of rare earth elements in tea in Henan province. Methods The tea samples after acidolysised were tested and analysed for rare earth elements by ICP-MS, and data were analyzed with SPSS 19 software. Results The detection rates of rare earth elements among 90 samples were 72.6%, with means of 0.095 mg/kg. The detection rates of rare earth elements among Xin Yang, Nan Yang and Zheng Zhou were 71.0%, 71.7%, 75.2% respectively, with means of 0.092, 0.088 and 0.106 mg/kg, respectively. Conclusion With means of the rare earth elements of Ce, La and Nd in tea of Henan province were higher, while the contents of the remaining 13 kinds rare earth elements were extremely low.