Although beryllium is widely used as alloying component in diverse light-weight alloys, the crystal chemistry of beryllium containing Zintl phases and intermetallic compounds is only scarcely developed and only few phase diagrams, mostly the industrially relevant ones, have been studied in detail. The present review summarizes the crystal chemical data of binary and ternary beryllium intermetallic compounds along with the results of the few documented physical property studies.