Sphingolipids and their derivatives such as glycosphingolipids and sphingomyelins exist ubiquitously in biomembrane of all eukaryotic cells, which play pivotal roles in cell proliferation, recognition, adhesion, and signal transduction. Sphingosine is shown to be the important lipid moiety in the large majority of glycosphingolipids and sphingomyelins, while phytosphingosine is one of the major long-chain moieties of glycosphingolipids. Due to the significance of the two bioactive lipids, tremendous efforts have been made to synthesize sphingosine or phytosphingosine using chiral pool approaches, chiral auxiliary and asymmetric reactions to construct the continuous stereogenic centers in them. This review covers the synthetic literatures published in the year after 2000.