Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography, an alternative liquid chromatography mode, is of particular interest in separating hydrophilic and polar ionic compounds. Compared with traditional liquid chromatography techniques, hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography offers specific advantages mainly including: (1) relatively green and water-soluble mobile phase composition, which enhances the solubility of hydrophilic and polar ionic compounds; (2) no need for ion-pairing reagents and high content of organic solvent, which benefits mass spectrometry detection; (3) high orthogonality to reverse-phase liquid chromatography, well adapted to two-dimensional liquid chromatography for complicated samples. Therefore, hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography has been rapidly developed in many areas over the past decades. This review summarizes the recent progress (from 2012 to July 2016) of hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography in pharmaceutical analysis, with the focus on detecting chemical drugs in various matrices, charactering active compounds of natural products and assessing biotherapeutics through typical structure unit. Moreover, the retention mechanism and behavior of analytes in hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography as well as some novel hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography columns used for pharmaceutical analysis are also described.