The invention discloses a preparation method of butterfly-tie-shaped cerium dioxide, and relates to the preparation method of the cerium dioxide. The preparation method aims to solve the technical problems that the morphology of the cerium dioxide prepared by preparation methods in the prior art is mainly rod-shaped, line-shaped, tube-shaped and spherical. The preparation method comprises the following steps: first, mixing Ce(NO3)3.6H2O and L-cysteine, adding into distilled water and stirring until the Ce(NO3)3.6H2O and the L-cysteine are completely dissolved, then adding NaOH, and continuing to stir for 30 min to obtain a mixed liquid; and second, transferring the mixed liquid into a reaction kettle for reaction, naturally cooling to the room temperature, washing a sample with the distilled water until the sample being free of impurity, filtering, drying, and then calcining, thus obtaining the butterfly-tie-shaped cerium dioxide. The butterfly-tie-shaped cerium dioxide prepared by the preparation method is butterfly-tie-shaped, and both ends of the butterfly-tie-shaped cerium dioxide are bound-branch-shaped, the sample has complete morphology, the size is about 18 [mu]m, the size distribution is uniform, both ends of the sample are multilevel structures, and have pore structures. The preparation method belongs to the field of preparation of oxides.