  ALICE is the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its main physics goal
is to study the properties of strongly-interacting matter at conditions of high
energy density and high temperature expected to be reached in central Pb--Pb
collisions. Charm and beauty quarks are well-suited tools to investigate this
state of matter since they are produced in initial hard scatterings and are
therefore generated early in the system evolution and probe its hottest,
densest stage. ALICE recorded pp data at $\rm \sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV and 2.76 TeV
and Pb--Pb data at $\rm \sqrt{s}_{\rm NN}$=2.76 TeV in 2010 and 2011. We
present the latest results on heavy flavour and J/$\psi$ production at both
central and forward rapidity.
