Rare earths have excellent physicochemical properties and have important applications in a wide range of fields, and always been recognized as a key mineral resource by many major countries, including China, the United States, Japan and Australia. However, rare earth raw minerals are diverse, low grade, often closely coexist with gangue minerals of similar nature, and its beneficiation and enrichment relies heavily on the development of the reagents on rare earth mineral processing technology. In this review, the research and development status of mineral-based rare earth ore flotation reagents, including collecting agents(hydroxamic acid, fatty acid, phosphoric acid and others), foaming agents(2# oil and others), modifying agents (depressants, activators) and their flotation mechanism are described. The innovation of chemical mineral processing reagents for ion-adsorption type rare earths ores, including leaching agents, precipitation regents are summarized. In particular, this review pays special attention to the rare earth flotation collectors, especially for hydroxamic acid which is the current mainstream collector, and this review also provides a more detailed description of the capture mechanism of hydroxamic acid as well as the synthesis route. And at the end of this review, it also points out the future research direction of the reagents on rare earth mineral processing technology should be toward the higher selectivity, higher recovery, and more environmentally friendly. This review provides some useful reference for enterprises or personnel who engaged in the rare earth mineral processing or related pharmaceuticals.