Disclosed herein are an apparatus and method for recognizing a human in an image. The apparatus includes a learning unit and a human recognition unit. The learning unit calculates a boundary value between a human and a non-human based on feature candidates extracted from a learning image, detects a feature candidate for which an error is minimized as the learning image is divided into the human and the non-human using the calculated boundary value, and determines the detected feature candidate to be a feature. The human recognition unit extracts a candidate image where a human may be present from an acquired image, and determines whether the candidate image corresponds to a human based on the feature that is determined by the learning unit.