Two-photon absorption is an important non-linear process employed for high resolution bio-imaging and non-linear optics. In this work, we realize two-photon excitation of a quantum emitter embedded in a two-dimensional (2D) material. We examine defects in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and show that the emitters exhibit similar spectral and quantum properties under one-photon and two-photon excitation. Furthermore, our findings are important to deploy two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride for quantum non-linear photonic applications. C 2016 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4961684]