I discussed some of the options for parsing HTML and gave some example code here: "Two classic modules are HTML::Parser and HTML::TreeBuilder, but there are several others, such as Mojo::DOM. If the input is always XHTML, there's XML::Twig and many more XML-based modules."
If all you want to do is strip HTML tags, then this is a FAQ: How do I remove HTML from a string?
Use HTML::Strip, or HTML::FormatText which not only removes HTML but also attempts to do a little simple formatting of the resulting plain text.