Rice straw was successfully converted to ethanol by separate enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation by Mucor indicus, Rhizopus oryzae, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The hydrolysis temperature and pH of commercial cellulase and β-glucosidase enzymes were first investigated and their best performance obtained at 45 °C and pH 5.0. The pretreatment of the straw with dilute-acid hydrolysis resulted in 0.72 g g-1 sugar yield during 48 h enzymatic hydrolysis, which was higher than steam-pretreated (0.60 g g-1) and untreated straw (0.46 g g-1). Furthermore, increasing the concentration of the dilute-acid pretreated straw from 20 to 50 and 100 g L-1 resulted in 13% and 16% lower sugar yield, respectively. Anaerobic cultivation of the hydrolyzates with M. indicus resulted in 0.36-0.43 g g-1 ethanol, 0.11-0.17 g g-1 biomass, and 0.04-0.06 g g-1 glycerol, which is comparable with the corresponding yields by S. cerevisiae (0.37-0.45 g g-1 ethanol, 0.04-0.10 g g-1 biomass and 0.05-0.07 glycerol). These two fungi produced no other major metabolite from the straw and completed the cultivation in less than 25 h. However, R. oryzae produced lactic acid as the major by-product with yield of 0.05-0.09 g g-1. This fungus had ethanol, biomass and glycerol yields of 0.33-0.41, 0.06-0.12, and 0.03-0.04 g g-1, respectively.