Five novel perylene mols. with different intramol. charge-transfer (ICT) characters have been synthesized. The relation between the ICT character for different donating groups and the results for their electro- and photochem. properties as well as their performance in nanostructured dye-sensitized solar cells (nDSC) are reported. With the stronger donors, we obtain a shift of the LUMO to more neg. potential vs. normal hydrogen electrode (NHE) as well as an increased charge sepn. in the dye upon excitation. Ab initio calcns. were used to analyze the effects on orbital energies and electron distribution with the different donors. Incorporating the dyes in nDSCs, we see a drastic improvement in the performance for the more polar dyes. In particular, we find a much improved photovoltage because of higher LUMO levels, allowing conduction band tuning in the TiO2 as well as a contribution from the permanent dipoles in the dyes. The photocurrent improves remarkably with increasing ICT character of the dyes. The external quantum efficiency reached over 70%, and the overall solar-to-elec. energy conversion efficiency was improved to almost 4% for the dye with highest ICT character, which can be compared with devices with the std. N719 dye (Ru(dcbpy)2(NCS)2) showing 6% under similar conditions. The performance is a significant improvement compared to previous reports for perylenes and lifts the performance from modest to promising. Initial stability tests show that the dye with the highest performance was spectrally stable after more than 2000 h of irradn. in a solar-cell device.