To develop chiral anticancer drug candidates for molecular target DNA, the synthesis and characterization of a novel enantiomerically pure copper(II) complex [Cu 1 Cl (2) ] (2) of an optically pure ligand N-(pyridin-2-ylmethylene) dehydroabietylamine (1) was carried out. The coordination geometry of the copper center is a distorted square-planar arrangement. The interactions of 1 and 2 with salmon sperm DNA were investigated by viscosity measurements, UV, fluorescence and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopic techniques. All the results reveal that 1 and 2 interacted with DNA through intercalation and 2 exhibited a higher DNA binding ability. Further, 1 and 2 could cleave supercoiled pBR322 DNA by single strand and 2 displayed stronger cleavage ability in the presence of ascorbic acid. In vitro cytotoxicity of 1 and 2 against HeLa, SiHa, HepG-2 and A431 cancer cell lines was studied using CCK-8 assay. The results indicate that 2 had a superior cytotoxicity than 1 and the widely used drug cisplatin under identical conditions. Flow cytometry analysis demonstrates 2 produced death of HeLa cancer cells through an apoptotic pathway. Cell cycle analysis shows that 2 mainly arrested HeLa cells at the S phase. A novel enantiomerically pure copper(II) complex [Cu 1 Cl (2) ] (2) of an optically pure ligand N-(pyridin-2-ylmethylene) dehydroabietylamine (1), based on natural product rosin has been synthesized. 2 has the potential to act as effective anticancer drug.