During the last few decades, several studies relating to coral reef fishes in Vietnam have been conducted and published for individual coral reefs along the coast and offshore islands. However, no attempts have been made to compile a list of all known reef fish species from the area or to examine patterns of reef fish biodiversity across Vietnam. To address this issue, we assembled a comprehensive species distribution data set of coral reef fishes from the 23 major locations of coral reefs in the coastal waters of Vietnam. A total of 1049 species belonging to 362 genera and 91 families of reef associated fishes are currently known from the area. The 14 most-speciose families, which account for 67.8% of the total reef fish fauna, were Pomacentridae (110 species), Gobiidae (107), Labridae (100), Apogonidae (60), Serranidae (47), Blenniidae (46), Chaetodontidae (41), Scaridae (36), Scorpaenidae (32), Acanthuridae (30), Muraenidae (29), Lutjanidae (26), Carangidae (26), and Holocentridae (21). The central to southeast Vietnam (from Con Co island to Con Dao islands) supported higher species numbers compared to those on the western side of the Tonkin Gulf and the Thailand Gulf. A zoogeographic analysis reveals three distinct groups of reef fishes, in which the southern area supported 3–4 times higher numbers than the northern area and the southwestern area.