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Among the natural clay minerals, sepiolite has been widely used in environmental remediation fields due to its fibrous chain structure of interlayer between silicon oxygen tetrahedron and magnesium oxygen octahedron, which has large specific surface area and pore volume. In this study, SiO2-Mg(OH)2 composite material was first prepared derived from sepiolite via acid-alkaline treatment, and magnetite was then loaded on the composite, forming magnetic nanocomposite (SiO2-Mg(OH)2-Fe3O4) with high specific surface area. Mean-while, the removal performance of this new nanocomposite material to Pb(II) was studied, systematically. The results demonstrate that the removal capacity of the magnesia-containing nanocomposite (SiO2-Mg(OH)2-Fe3O4,) for Pb(II) is 257.6 mg/g, which has higher specific surface area and good magnetism compared with raw sepiolite. The adsorption data fit well with the pseudo-first-order adsorption kinetic model and Freundich isotherm model. Due to the simplicity of the synthetic procedure, the high removal efficiency for Pb(II), as well as the easy separation of the adsorbent from water, the sepiolite nanocomposites have notewor thy application potential in the environmental field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]