The construction of the free Banach lattice generated by a real Banach space is extended to the complex setting. It is shown that for every complex Banach space $E$ there is a complex Banach lattice $FBL_{\mathbb C}[E]$ containing a linear isometric copy of $E$ and satisfying the following universal property: for every complex Banach lattice $X_{\mathbb C}$, every operator $T:E\rightarrow X_{\mathbb C}$ admits a unique lattice homomorphic extension $\hat{T}:FBL_{\mathbb C}[E]\rightarrow X_{\mathbb C}$ with $\|\hat{T}\|=\|T\|$. The free complex Banach lattice $FBL_{\mathbb C}[E]$ is shown to have analogous properties to those of its real counterpart. However, examples of non-isomorphic complex Banach spaces $E$ and $F$ can be given so that $FBL_{\mathbb C}[E]$ and $FBL_{\mathbb C}[F]$ are lattice isometric. The spectral theory of induced lattice homomorphisms on $FBL_{\mathbb C}[E]$ is also explored.