New Zealand is one of the main place of production of green nephrite; nevertheless, green nephrite jade from New Zealand is uncommon on present Chinese gem market, and little research has been devoted to this green nephrite. In this paper, characteristics of mineral compositions and chemical components of green nephrite samples from New Zealand were studied by means of the conventional gemmological testing,X-ray powder diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and LA-ICP-MS. The results indicate that the microtexture of New Zealand green nephrite is not very compact and the thicknesses of mineral grains are different. Its main mineral component is actinolite. In addition, the black impurity in it is chromite. A comparison of New Zealand green nephrite with the green nephrite from Xinjiang shows that the content of main elements and that of trace elements in these two kinds of nephrite are different.