In the present study, we developed a recombinant hepatitis B virus (rHBV) replicon in order to visualize virus-infected living cells via reporter gene expression. We first constructed an HBV replicon vector HBV1.1-ΔHBc113, with partial deletion of the sequence encoding HBV core (HBc). The vector demonstrated a competent viral DNA replication in transfected cells, only if HBc was provided in trans. However, the replication efficiency of ΔHBc113 vector was greatly impaired by insertion of a large foreign DNA fragment. Taking advantage of the property of intein-mediated protein splicing, we chose enhanced-green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and super folder GFP (sfGFP) as exteins, and developed EGFP^N1-8/EGFP^C9-11 and sfGFP^N1-10/sfGFP^C11 split system, respectively. We further constructed EGFP^C9-11 and sfGFP^C11 rHBV replicons based on the ΔHBc113 vector, the latter of which was proved to be competent for HBc-rescued, functional intracellular replication, and produced progeny virions in the culture medium. In cells co-expressing EGFP^N or sfGFP^N, rHBV replicon-expressed EGFP^C9-11 or sfGFP^C11 was capable of working with their counterparts, respectively, forming intact and functional GFP through intein-mediated protein splicing. We thus successfully developed a fluorescent rHBV replicon system, which can be not only used for HBV infection mechanism study, but also have an extensive application prospect for high-throughput antiviral screening.