The risk factors of diastolic heart failure include among others:hypertension, diabetes, myocardial ischemia and aging. The underlying mechanisms for this cardiac complication are incompletely understood. With the increase of aging of the population, the prevalence and mortality of diastolic heart failure is rising gradually. It seriously affects the life quality and life span of people. In order to more truly reveal the underlying mechanisms of diastolic heart failure and to develope novel therapeutic strategies, the experimental animal models are extremely important. The present review focuses on providing an overview of the characteristics of these models for the growing number of investigators who seek to understand the pathology of diastolic heart failure.