A novel ruthenium complex bearing a bisdemethoxycurcumin, which is a natural dye exhibiting a strong absorption around 410 nm, as a ligand has been synthesized and characterized for application to dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The DSC with this sensitizer showed about 55% incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency at the wavelength region between 450 and 600 nm, and 5.76% conversion efficiency under AM 1.5 (100 mW cm(-2)) irradiation.