The face recognition includes enhancement and segmentation of face image, detection of face boundary and facial features, matching of extracted features against the features in a database, and finally recognition of the face. The face detection algorithms are based on either gray level template matching or computation of geometric relationships among facial features. Though a number of algorithms are devised for face recognition, the technology is not matured enough to recognize the face of a person with and without beard to be the same. This research proposes a robust algorithm for preprocessing the face image with beard for face recognition. Simulation is done using eighteen JPEG images of 9 different persons having beard and without beard. This research finds application in homeland security where it can increase the robustness of the existing face recognition algorithms.