Inherent optical properties are the important content of the optical properties of the water body. The inherent optical of cyanobacteria provides theoretical basis for remote sensing-based monitoring on cyanobacteria bloom. In this paper, inherent optical properties including absorbing, scattering and backscattering properties were measured for three typical cyanobacteria species in eutrophic lakes of China, cultured by AC-S and BB9 in the laboratory:Microcystis, Dolichospermum and Aphanizomenon. Pigment-specific absorbing, scattering and backscattering coefficients were utilized to represent absorbing and scattering ability. The results showed that all of the three cyanobacteria had the similar absorbing spectrum with the absorbing peaks at 440, 620 and 675 nm. Microcystis showed the highest specific-absorbing coefficient at 620 and 676 nm, while Dolichospermum had the specific-absorbing peak at 440 nm. Aphanizomenon had the strongest scattering and backscattering ability, and Microcystis had the weakest scattering and backscattering ability. The main factors affecting absorbing and scattering properties were the pigment concentration (chlorophyll-a or phycocyanin) and the ratio of phycocyanin and pigment concentration (chlorophyll-a and phycocyanin). The absorbing spectrum and scattering spectrum of these three cyanobacterial rose as the pigment concentration increased. But the specific-backscattering coefficient got down with the increasing ratio of phycocyanin and pigment concentration. It also showed that for these three cyanobacteria there were no obvious correlations between the cyanobacteria particle size and their inherent optical properties.