The technologically important amorphous rare earth (RE) ‐transition metal (TM) alloys provide an excellent system for investigating basic magnetic phenomena in amorphous magnetic materials. The sensitivity of the properties of the amorphous RE‐TM alloys to slight compositional changes indicated the need for a rapid survey of the systematic variation of their properties. A brief review of this survey and the theoretical model will be presented. One result is to point out Fe as the most favorable TM for obtaining a more detailed understanding of the magnetic properties. We will present data obtained from 57Fe Mössbauer effect, magnetometer and magneto‐optic measurements on amorphous RE(Gd,Tb,Dy,Ho,Tm,Yb,Lu) ‐Fe amorphous alloy films. The Mössbauer effect results indicate that the Fe spin decreases with increasing RE content but the rate of the decrease is dependent on the RE effective spin, (g−1)J. Using this information, we present a mean field theory model which reasonably reproduces the magnetic properties of the amorphous RE‐Fe alloys, and which provides useful insights into their properties.