Lactic acid is an important fine chemical, which has important applications in food, medicine, daily use chemicals and degradable materials. The use of agricultural wastes as raw materials to produce lactic acid can not only make full use of biomass resources, but also alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand of lactic acid, which is of great significance to promote carbon emission reduction and green development. In this paper, the latest research progress of lactic acid (ester) production from biomass by microbial fermentation and chemical catalysis was summarized, and factors limiting the production of lactic acid were analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages of the two methods were comprehensively compared. Finally, opportunities, challenges as well as potential research directions of lactic acid production from biomass were prospected.