The invention belongs to the technical field of luminescent macromolecular composite material, and particularly relates to a method for preparing a sulfhydryl functional rare earth-macromolecular composite luminescent material. In the method, firstly, by adopting an organic synthesis method, aromatic organic micro molecules are grafted in an inorganic silica skeleton to obtain organic bridge precursor; the organic bridge precursor, polymers and rare earth ions are further combined to obtain the rare earth macromolecular material by chemical action; at last, by the sol-gel method, all obtained materials are subjected to polyreaction to obtain dried gel, so that the organic macromolecular polymers with long carbon chains are embedded in silica network substrate by covalent bond; and the dried gel is subjected to dry ageing to obtain the macromolecular composite material with stable chemical and thermodynamic performances, smooth surface appearance and special luminescence emission. The method has the advantages of simple preparation process, mild experimental conditions, strong operability, good reproductivity, low cost, stable quality of obtained products and order appearance, and the sizes of crystal grains can be controlled in the range of micron and nanometer.