Introduction. Each person needs happiness. Satisfaction with one's life activity and the opportunity to realize personal potential are necessary for this. Ideas about happiness and its subjective experience determine the construction of a life path, personal goals and meanings. Intensive development of self-awareness, the formation of personal meanings and value orientations led to the study of the phenomenon of happiness in youth. The purpose of our research was to study the features of the subjective experience of happiness in students with different life -meaning orientations. Materials and methods: Life-meaning Orientations Test (D.A. Leontiev), Oxford Happiness Inventory (M. Argyle), Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire. The results were processed in the SPSS 19.0 program. The article presents the materials of an empirical research. Sample: students aged 18-22, including 53% female and 47% male students. Results and discussion: a high level of subjective experience of happiness (56%) is typical for the majority of students. 44% of respondents do not feel happy. These students need to organize psychological conditions for the actualization of personal resources, understanding and positive assessment of their life activities. Indicators of life-meaning orientations “emotional saturation of life” and “locus of control - Life” dominate students, the least expression is characteristic of the indicator “locus of control I”. For girls, the indicator “emotional saturation of life” dominates, and for boys – the “goals” is predominant that reflects the high emotionality of the female sex and pragmatism and focus on results in males. According to the results, students with high and medium levels of subjective experience of happiness have a target and semantic orientation of life, a harmonious time perspective, and overall life satisfaction, unlike students with a low level on this indicator. Conclusion: the subjective experience of happiness can act as an important psychological condition for the development of meaningful life-meaning orientations in youth.