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<em>Monascus purpureus</em> is a fungus that had been cultured on the rice in eastern Asian countries from thousand years ago and used as a food for long years. The fungus produces very valuable metabolites with polyketide structure. The most of important metabolite is Monacolin K, Lovastatin or competitive inhibitor of HMG-CoA reductase (an affective enzyme in cholesterol synthesis). This metabolite have properties including reducing blood cholesterol, treatment of progressive renal disease, the potential for treat a variety of tumors, preventing infection, vascular diseases and bone fractures. In this study, <em>Monascus purpureus PTCC5303</em> has been used for lovastatin production in liquid fermentation. The nutritional concentration that were significant in biomass and lovastatin production included maltose and MgSO₄, were optimized by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) in a milibioreactor. The optimum concentration of maltose and MgSO₄wereobtained 10 g/L and 0.78 g/L, respectively. According to our results, maximum lovastatin production under optimum condition containing maltose 10 g/L, peptone 5 g/L, MgSO4.7H2O 0.78 g/L, MnSO4.H2O 0.5 g/L, KH2PO4 4 g/L, thiamine 0.1 g/L, and pH=7 at 30°C, 130 rpm and flow rate 1.8 L/min was obtained to be 309 µg l⁻¹ after 10 days of fermentation period.