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<i>Agave angustifolia</i> is an important crassulacean acid metabolism plant species, with wide applications in beverage and sisal fiber production. In this study, we carried out a transcriptome analysis of <i>A</i>. <i>angustifolia</i> leaves, generating a total of 58,482,436 clean reads through Illumina paired-end sequencing. De novo transcriptome assembly generated 67,314 unigenes, with about half of them having homologs in four public databases. In the Nr database, <i>Asparagus officinalis</i> was shown to be most closely related to agave, and the early angiosperm <i>Amborella trichopoda</i> was selected as an outgroup species. We further identified five, two, seven, seven, seven, six and six <i>CAD</i> genes in asparagus, amborella, <i>A. deserti</i>, <i>A. tequilana</i>, <i>A. americana</i>, <i>A.</i> hybrid H11648 and <i>A. angustifolia</i>, respectively. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree revealed the species-specific expansion of <i>CAD</i> genes in arabidopsis, rice and agave. The expression analysis indicated the conservatively expressed <i>CAD1</i>/<i>2</i>/<i>4</i>/<i>6</i>, providing candidate targets for manipulation to improve lignin traits. The species-specific expression of <i>CAD3</i>/<i>5</i>/<i>7</i> indicates the existence of different regulatory mechanisms controlling the expression of these genes in agave species. This study presents the first transcriptome dataset of <i>A. angustifolia</i>, facilitating future studies on lignin biosynthesis in agave.