Objective To establish a rat model of liver metabolism profile in chronic heart failure (CHF), to explore the dynamics of liver metabolism in CHF from the point of view of metabolism, and to find the characteristic metabolites valuable for the molecular mechanism and management of CHF. Methods Twenty male Wistar rats were assigned to the CHF group to receive aortic coarctation or to the control group to receive sham surgery, and were bred for 24 weeks following surgery. The metabolic profiling of the rat liver tissues was analyzed on a metabonomics research platform. Orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) model and principal component analysis (PCA) model were established for liver tissues of the CHF rats, and the characteristic metabolites were finally derived by data processing with SPSS 19.0 software. Results The PAC and OPLS-DA models were established successfully. Ten characteristic metabolites with significant differences between the CHF and control groups, including lysophosphatidyl choline, lysophosphatidyl ethanolamine, oleic acid, glycocholic acid, and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, were screened and identified from the models. Conclusions The metabolic disorders in CHF rats are well fitted to the established metabolic profile models, and these identified characteristic metabolites may provide reference for the pathophysiological molecular mechanism and management, etc., of chronic heart failure.