Hydroquinone is a most commonly used whitening agent in cosmetics. A high performance liquid chromatography method was developed and validated for the quantitative determination of hydroquinone in creams. Validation parameters such as linearity, precision, accuracy, and limit of detection and limit of quantitation were determined. HPLC was carried by reverses phase technique on a RP-C18 column with a mobile phase of water and methanol (pH 5.0) 70:30. The linearity in the range of 2.0-40.0 μg/mL presents a correlation coefficient of 0.9998. The LOD and LOQ were 0.16 and 0.53 μg/mL, respectively. The precision of the method was found to be satisfactory with a coefficient of variation below 2.2%. The recovery values were in the range of 92.4 to 99.0%. The method is sensitive, fast, and simple. It has been successfully applied to the determination of hydroquinone in cosmetic creams. The results obtained agreed well with the percentages given by the manufacturers.