Benzoyl glycine (BG) is a potential organic non-linear optical material. Optically good quality single crystals of pure, benzophenone and iodine doped BG are grown at ambient temperature from dimethylformamide by employing slow evaporation technique. The grown crystals are characterized by single crystal XRD, Fourier transform infrared and optical absorption spectral studies. The microhardness studies confirm that BG has a fairly high Vickers hardness number (VHN) value (39.70 kg mm(-2)) in comparison to other organic NLO crystals. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.