As a renewable resource, biomass can be transformed into liquid fuels and chemicals. Hydrogenation of levulinic acid and its ester to gamma-valerolactone is one of the effective way in biomass conversion. In this manuscript, the magnetically recoverable iron-doped molybdenum carbides were prepared by using ionic liquids as all-in-one precursors and characterized by XRD, XPS, TEM and H-2 chemical adsorption. Due to a strong interaction between Fe and Mo2C, Fe-Mo2C-1:18, preparing by using the precursor with the metal to carbon ratio of 1:18, showed an excellent catalytic performance in the hydrogenation of ethyl levulinate, and the conversion of ethyl levulinate can achieve 100% and the selectivity of gamma-valerolactone can also reach 95.9% under the optimized reaction conditions. At the same time, Fe-Mo2C-1:18 showed favorable catalytic applicability for different substrates and its catalytic activity decreased slightly after three cycles. [GRAPHICS] .