This paper proposes a novel hash function construction based on cascade chaos. Firstly, the L-length original message is divided into a number of blocks according to every character, which are transformed into corresponding ASCII values. Then the ASCII values are normalized into the interval of (0, 1), which compose a big array with the L-length. Regarding the first normalized ASCII value with the algorithm parameter H as the initial input of the cascade chaos, a series of sequences are obtained, where the CBC mode is adopted. The 128-bit hash value is generated by transforming the sequences into binary sequence according to a rule. Simulation results and performance analysis show that the proposed hash function has high sensitivity to the original message and system parameters, strong confusion and diffusion, excellent statistical properties, strong collision resistance and flexible to generated 160, 256, 512-bit hash value after modifying the algorithm slightly.