Mitoxantrone, a clinically useful antitumour antibiotic for leukaemia and breast cancer, has received more attentions. In this paper, the interaction between mitoxantrone and calf thymus DNA is investigated by Raman and fluorescence spectroscopies, and the binding site of mitoxantrone to calf thymus DNA is explored. The results showed that mitoxantrone interacts with calf thymus DNA bases by the intercalation of anthracycline into the base pair plane of adenine (A) and thymine (T), and it results in the disruption of the hydrogen bonds between calf thymus DNA bases, and thus the calf thymus DNA double-strand can be disrupted into the B-form DNA double-strand segments.