The objective of this work is to develop a simple, sensitive and non-extractive spectrophotometric method for the determination of memantine HCl (MEM), clomipramine HCl (CLM) and fluvoxamine maleate (FLV). The proposed method was based on the formation of colored ion-pair complexes between the basic nitrogen of the target drugs and rose bengal (RB) dye in a weak acidic medium. The formed complexes were measured at 576 nm for MEM, CLM and at 575 nm for FLV. The reaction conditions were optimized to obtain the maximum color intensity. Beer's law was obeyed in the range of 2–20, 1–16 and 6–30 μg/mL for MEM, CLM and FLV, respectively. The limit of detection (LOD) was 0.476, 0.185, 0.806 and the limit of quantitation (LOQ) was 1.443, 0.559 and 2.443 for MEM, CLM and FLV, respectively. The composition ratio of the ion-pair complexes was found to be 1:1 as determined by Job's method. Conclusion The proposed method was applied successfully for the analysis of the cited drugs in pure and dosage forms. Results of the proposed method were statistically compared with the reported methods by applying student's t- and F-tests and no significant differences were observed.