Abstract. In this paper, we propose a new face recognition method combining Vector Quantization (VQ) method and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. VQ method is used as a feature extractor and SVM classifier for feature classification. By applying low pass filtering and VQ processing to a facial image, a histogram including effective facial feature is generated, which is called VQ histogram. After dividing VQ histograms into training set and testing set, classifiers are trained with training examples (training histograms) by using Gradient Descent Method (GDM). Testing examples (testing histograms) can be tested with optimal classifiers for face recognition. We use the publicly available ORL face database for the evaluation of recognition accuracy, which consist of 400 images of 40 individuals. Experimental results show that the variety of filter size affects the recognition accuracy. The recognition rate increases with an increase of the ratio of training examples and testing examples, and maximum recognition rate of 98.0 % is obtained.