Abstract: An industrially meritorious process for preparing aromatic polyhydric alcohol is disclosed. The process can give an extremely high conversion rate of raw material, i.e., aromatic carboxylic acid ester, and an extremely high selectivity to the objective compound. The process comprises catalytic hydrocracking of an aromatic carboxylic acid ester in which an improvement resides in the fact that an ester represented by the general formula Ar(COOR).sub.m, (CH.sub.2 OH).sub.n, (wherein Ar means an aromatic group, R is independently selected from normal and branched alkyl groups having at least 6 carbon atoms, m' means an integer of at least 1, n' means zero or a positive integer and m'+n' satisifies the relationship m'+n'.gtoreq.2) is used as raw material. An aromatic polyhydric alcohol is a very useful material, especially as a raw material for the preparation of polymeric substances having high heat resistance.