To study the hepatotoxicity of emodin based on bilirubin metabolism mediated by glucuronidation of UGT1A1 enzyme. In this study, three different incubation systems were established by using RLM, HLM, and rUGT1A1, with bilirubin as the substrate. Different concentrations of bilirubin and emodin were added in the incubation systems. The double reciprocal Michaelis equation was drawn based on the total amount of bilirubin glucuronidation. The apparent inhibition constant Ki was then calculated with the slope curve to predict the hepatotoxicity. The results indicated that emodin had a significant inhibition to the UGT1A1 enzyme in all of the three systems, with Ki=5.400±0.956(P<0.05) in HLM system, Ki =10.020±0.611(P<0.05) in RLM system, Ki=4.850±0.528(P<0.05) in rUGT1A1 system. Meanwhile, emodin had no significant difference between rat and human in terms of inhibition of UGT1A1 enzyme. Emodin had a potential risk of the hepatotoxicity by inhibiting the UGT1A1 enzyme activity. And the method established in this study provides a new thought and new method to evaluate hepatotoxicity and safety of traditional Chinese medicines.