Abstract: Cheese whey is a dairy industry waste have high lactose concentration, which case environmental problem. Therefore biofuel production from cheese whey become an interest as renewable energy. In this study 28 yeasts were isolated from Kenyan cheese whey and characterized for lactose fermentation. Out of them one isolate, designated as BM9 had high efficiency for lactose fermentation was selected. For genetically identification PCR amplification of both internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and 5.8 rDNA region (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2) and the variable D1/D2 domain of the 26S rRNA gene were used. RFLP of the PCR-amplified ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 region (750 bp) using two restriction enzymes HaeIII and HinfI yielded fragments with 650 + 80 bp and 250 + 190 + 120 + 80 bp respectively witch identified the isolate as Kluyveromyces marxianus. 26S rRNA of the isolate was sequenced and compared with known 26S rRNA sequences in the GenBank database. Results of 26S rRNA gene confirmed that the isolate was highly related to K. marxianus with similarity 99%. Phylogenetic analysis show that BM9 shared a one cluster with K. marxianus. The fermentative performance of the strain BM9 on cheese whey to produce bio-ethanol at different parameters such as incubation temperature, initial pH, whey sugar concentrations, and yeast concentrations was evaluated.