Fraction of absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR) is one of the pivotal parameters in terrestrial ecosystem modelling and crop growth monitoring. Airborne LiDAR is an advanced active remote sensing technology which can acquire fine three-dimensional canopy structural information quickly and accurately. Although some previous studies have shown that LiDAR-derived metrics had strong relationships with canopy FPARs, these estimation models without physical meaning are hard to be extended to various vegetation canopies and different growth periods. This study proposed a physical FPAR inversion method based on airborne LiDAR data and field measurements. The method considered direct and diffuse radiations separately based on the SAIL model and energy budget balance principle. The canopy FPAR was inversed from the structural information provided by LiDAR point cloud data and the spectral information provided by ground measurements. The estimated FPAR was validated with the field-measured FPAR over 39 maize plots. Results showed that the proposed method had a good performance in estimating the total FPAR of maize canopy (<i>R</i><sup>2</sup> = 0.76, RMSE = 0.062, <i>n</i> = 39). This study provides the potential to estimate the total, direct, and diffuse FPARs of vegetation canopy from airborne LiDAR data.