The invention relates to a system and a method for acquiring, recognizing and monitoring portraits in hotels, office buildings and recreation areas. The system mainly comprises a front end monitoring point and monitoring management centers at all levels, wherein the front end monitoring end is arranged in the hotels, the office buildings or the recreation areas and comprises an image acquisition device and a portrait acquisition comparing device for acquiring human face images, performing comparing recognition, and storing the acquired human face images and scene images, the results of the comparing recognition and other monitoring management information in a local database or transmitting the same to a higher level monitoring management center to accept the inquiry and the management by the higher level monitoring management center; the monitoring management is provided with the database, and can receive information of the front end monitoring point or a lower level monitoring management center, transmit monitor objects in an area under administration, receive and process an instruction of the higher level monitoring management center, and perform system management, service scheduling processing and portrait comparing recognition and inquiry of the area under administration. By adopting the system and the method, the intelligent degree of the prior monitoring system, and clues are provided for the public security department to solve a case.