Anthocyanins are a secondary metabolite produced by plants, and are responsible for red, blue, and purple pigmentation of plants. They are nearly ubiquitous across flowering plants, and play a role in attracting pollinators and scavenging radical oxygen species. Additionally, they are known for their health benefits and potential application as a plant-based alternative for synthetic food dyes. In this study, we found that species belonging to Poaceae, or the grass family, have unique, independently-evolved regulatory and structural genes for anthocyanin biosynthesis, and that the genus Brachypodium has lost the pathway entirely. Our results suggest that the development of an independent regulatory gene lineage in grasses led to changes in other genes in the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway, and that an additional loss of regulatory genes contributed to the disappearance of structural genes in Brachypodium.