MircroRNA-130b (miR-130b) is proposed as a novel tumor-related miRNA and has been found to be significantly dysregulated in tumors. In this study, the expression level of miR-130b was found to be obviously higher in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues than that in nontumor tissues. Further, miR-130b was expressed at significantly higher levels in aggressive and recurrent tumor tissues. Clinical analysis indicated that high-expression of miR-130b was prominently correlated with venous infiltration, high Edmondson-Steiner grading and advanced tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) tumor stage in HCC. Elevated miR-130b expression was observed in all HCC cell lines (HepG2, SMMC-7721, Huh7, Hep3B and MHCC97H) as compared with that in a nontransformed hepatic cell line (LO2). Furthermore, an inverse correlation between miR-130b and E-cadherin and a positive correlation between miR-130b and Vimentin were observed in HCC tissues. Down-regulation of miR-130b expression reduced invasion and migration in both Hep3B and MHCC97H cells. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-gamma) was inversely correlated with miR-130b expression in HCC tissues. In addition, down-regulation of miR-130b restored PPAR-gamma expression and subsequently suppressed epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in HCC cells. We identified PPAR gamma as a direct target of miR-130b in HCC in vitro. Notably, PPAR-gamma knockdown abolished down-regulation of miR-130b-inhibited EMT in MHCC97H cells. In conclusion, miR-130b may promote HCC cell migration and invasion by inhibiting PPAR-gamma and subsequently inducing EMT.