The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of gender and fitness level on health promoting lifestyle in university students. The participants of this study consisted of 1,623 university students (males=775; females=848) with mean age of 20.32 (SD=0.87) from 5 universities in northern Taiwan during the spring of 2005. The Health Promotion Model (Pender, 1996) was used as the theoretical foundations for this study. All participants completed Health Promotion Lifestyle Profile (HPLP), which was modified by Wang and Hsing (2004) from the available literature and was analyzed by MANOVA. With 2 (gender) x 3 (fitness level) x 6 (HPLP) MANOVA statistical analysis, the results of this study indicated that gender and fitness level have no interactive effect on health promoting lifestyle (Lambda=.991,p>.05), however, a significant main effects of fitness levels were found (Lambda=.136,p<.05). Specifically, this study found that all participants with high fitness level had a higher promoting healthy lifestyle on each of the major components (nutrition, physical activity, stress management, health responsibility, interpersonal relations, and spiritual growth) than those in medium fitness level and low fitness level (F=779.971; F=944.128; F=859.624; F=677.097; F=4793.165; F=758.609, p<.05). Recommendations for further research include examining the effects of gender and fitness levels on promoting a healthy lifestyle with different population, and intervention development that may further enhance fitness and health promoting lifestyles in Taiwan.Keyword(s): exercise/fitness, health promotion