This study produced a comprehensive transcriptome from newly molted adult ticks and will provide a useful resource for studies of tick feeding and host perception and also assist genome annotation refinements. The goal was to develop a comprehensive transcriptome of adult female Rhipicephalus microplus ticks and discover transcriptome changes that are related to feeding and host-perception prior to feeding. We have sequenced the transcriptomes of unfed newly molted adult female ticks, newly molted adult females that were feeding upon a bovine host for 3 hours following attachment to the host, and newly molted adult females that were placed in a gas-permeable bag attached to a bovine host for 3 hours (attachment to host prevented but host odors available to the ticks). There were 2 biological replicates and transcriptomes assembled from each individual experimental condition. A collective adult female transcriptome was assembled from sequence data pooled from all 3 conditions (using data from all replicates). Differential gene expression was examined using all possible comparisons to detect putative feeding-associated and host perception-associated transcripts. Resources in this dataset:Resource Title: Gene expression during the early stages of host perception and attachment in adult female Rhipicephalus microplus ticks. File Name: Web Page, url: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-019-00420-1