Abstract: A new arbitrary stiffened shell element is devised to investigate the geometrically nonlinear behavior of eccentrically stiffened laminated composite shell-like structures. In this model, the shell together with stiffeners is considered as a unit element—eccentrically stiffened shell element. The stiffener can be placed anywhere within the plate element and oriented at any direction. The main feature of this model lies in that the mesh divisions can be made irrelevant to the stiffener locations, which introduces considerable flexibility for mesh division. For large deformation, the Von-Karman kinematic relations of the shell and stiffener are considered. The transverse shear deformation effect is included by use of the Mindlin-Reissner first-order shear deformation theory.