To overcome the shortcoming of the traditional method used to improve the low contrast of fingerprint images, a novel method is proposed for enhancing the low contrast of fingerprint images based on Fast Discrete Curvelet Transforms (FDCT). After the input image is decomposed, to enhance the contrast of the fingerprint image, this paper uses nonlinear function based on Successive Mean Quantization Transform (SMQT) to adjust the coefficient of low frequency sub-band in low frequency component. It uses threshold denoising to enhance the details of the image in high frequency component. The simulation results show that the proposed method is better than histogram equalization and the method based on wavelet transform. The proposed algorithm enhances the contrast of low contrast fingerprint image and reduces noise at the same time. The images have satisfactory visual quality after enhancement.