Objective To study the differentially expressed microRNAs ( miRNAs) in breast canc-er formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded ( FFPE) tissue and the effect of Xihuang Pill extract on the expression of candidate miRNAs in breast cancer cell line in vitro. Methods Microarray was used to detect the differ-entially expressed miRNAs in breast cancer tissues, adjacent tissues and cancer tissues with different molec-ular types, and the results of unsupervised cluster analysis were processed by cluster software. Real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction ( qPCR) was used to detect the expression of candidate miRNAs in 106 breast cancer tissues, 22 paracancerous tissues and 66 benigh breast lesions. The extract of Xihuang Pill interfered with T-47D cells and MDA-MB-231 cells, then the expression of candidate miRNAs in those cells were detected by qPCR. Results The microarray results showed that the expression of miR-130b was higher in cancer tissues than in adjacent tissues (P<0. 05). The expression of miR-205 in basal-like cancer tissues with higher malignancy was significantly lower than that in luminal cancer tissues ( P<0. 05). qPCR showed that the expression miR-130b in cancer tissues (t=6. 123, P=0. 000) and adjacent tissues (t= -3. 375, P=0. 001) were significantly higher than that in benigh lesion tissues, and the ex-pression of miR-205 in cancer tissues was significantly lower than that in benigh lesion tissues ( t =-2. 073, P=0. 041). Cell experiment in vitro showed that the expression of miR-130b in T-47D cells de-creased after the intervention of Xihuang Pill extract (t=4. 341, P=0. 012) , while the expression of miR-205 in MDA-MB-231 cells increased after the intervention of Xihuang Pill extract ( t = -3. 266, P =0. 031). Conclusions The increase of miR-130b and the decrease of miR-205 are related to the occur-rence and development of breast cancer. The increase of miR-130b and the decrease of miR-205 may be the one of anti-tumor ways of Xihuang Pill.