References are not allowed as default values, you must wrap the default of 're' in a CODE reference (ex: sub { [] } and not []) at ... #### #! perl use strict; use warnings; package Test { use Moose; has re => (is => 'rw', isa => 'RegexpRef', default => sub { qr/abc/; }); sub BUILD { my $self = shift; $self->re(qr/^[0-9]+$/); } sub match { my ($self, $string) = @_; return $string =~ $self->re ? 'matches' : 'does not match'; } } my $t = Test->new(); print "$_ ", $t->match($_), "\n" for 'abc123def', '456';