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Let G be a nontrivial connected and vertex-colored graph. A subset X of the vertex set of G is called rainbow if any two vertices in X have distinct colors. The graph G is called rainbow vertex-disconnected if for any two vertices x and y of G, there exists a vertex subset S of G such that when x and y are nonadjacent, S is rainbow and x and y belong to different components of G − S; whereas when x and y are adjacent, S + x or S + y is rainbow and x and y belong to different components of (G − xy) − S. For a connected graph G, the rainbow vertex-disconnection number of G, denoted by rvd(G), is the minimum number of colors that are needed to make G rainbow vertex-disconnected. In this paper, we characterize all graphs of order n with rainbow vertex-disconnection number k for k ∈ {1, 2, n}, and determine the rainbow vertex-disconnection numbers of some special graphs. Moreover, we study the extremal problems on the number of edges of a connected graph G with order n and rvd(G)= k for given integers k and n with 1 ≤ k ≤ n.