An ability evaluation apparatus which evaluates an individual ability and stores a result of evaluation in an ability database, includes an ability mapping rule storing unit that stores an ability mapping rule which associates an ability item extracted from an ability sentence written in a natural language about an individual ability with a data item in the ability database using a structure of the ability sentence, a natural language processing unit that analyzes each sentence in a document written in the natural language about the individual ability to output a result of structural analysis, and an ability item storing unit that extracts the ability item from the result of structural analysis output from the natural language processing unit using the ability mapping rule stored in the ability mapping rule storing unit, and stores the extracted ability item in the ability database.