Face recognition subjected to various conditions is a challenging task. This paper presents a combined feature improved Fisher classifier method for face recognition. Both of the facial holistic information and local information are used for face representation. In addition, the improved linear discriminant analysis (I-LDA) is employed for good generalization capability. Experiments show that the method is not only robust to moderate changes of illumination, pose and facial expression but also superior to the traditional methods, such as eigenfaces and Fisherfaces.