NOVELTY - Extracting zeaxanthin from marigold, comprises crushing dried marigold, using aqueous ethanol solution for heating, refluxing and extracting, and concentrating to obtain marigold extract, extracting marigold extract, adjusting the extraction kettle to obtain the extract, dissolving extract in ethanol, precipitating and separating, then passing the resulting supernatant through a macro-porous resin, washing until the flowing liquid is neutral, using ethanol eluent for eluting, collecting eluate, concentrating, cooling the concentrated solution, filtering, and vacuum drying to obtain product.    USE - The method is useful for extracting zeaxanthin from marigold.    ADVANTAGE - The method adopts solvent method to separate and purify, which avoids the use of toxic reagent, reduces solvent residue, ensures product quality, and improves product recovery rate, and thus it brings great convenience for industrial production.    DETAILED DESCRIPTION - Extracting zeaxanthin from marigold, comprises: (a) crushing the dried marigold, using aqueous ethanol solution of volume percentage concentration as 60-95% for heating, refluxing and extracting at least for two times under vacuum conditions, where each extracting time is at least 90 minutes, the aqueous ethanol solution amount is at least 8-12 times of the raw material, the vacuum degree is 0.7-0.1 MPa, and temperature is 50-80 degrees C during the extraction process, and concentrating to obtain the marigold extract, where the concentration condition includes the vacuum degree as 0.7-0.1 MPa, temperature as not greater than 75 degrees C, and concentrating material liquid volume ratio is 1:10-14; (b) extracting the marigold extract in an extraction kettle of a supercritical extractor by using supercritical carbon dioxide as solvent and anhydrous ethanol as cosolvent; (c) adjusting the extraction kettle for controlling extraction pressure at 30-60 MPa, temperature at 30-50 degrees C, carbon dioxide flow rate at 10-20 l/hour, and the extraction time as 80-100 minutes to obtain the extract; and (d) dissolving the extract in ethanol, precipitating and separating, then passing the resulting supernatant through a macro-porous resin, washing with water until the flowing liquid is neutral, using ethanol eluent with volume percentage concentration as 30-90% for eluting, collecting eluate, concentrating to 11-15 B degrees , cooling the concentrated solution, filtering, and vacuum drying to obtain the product, where mass ratio of the macroporous resin and extract is 1:8-12.