I understand you asked for a regex, but this kinda looks like XML, so here's an XML::Twig parser solution: 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use XML::Twig;

my $xfile = <<EOF;
<foo>
<item><i>headline 1</i></item>
        <item><i>headline2</i></item>
</foo>
EOF

my $t = new XML::Twig();
$t->parse($xfile);
my @x;
for my $item ($t->root()->children('item')) {
    push @x, $item->first_child('i')->text();
}

print Dumper(\@x);

__END__

$VAR1 = [
          'headline 1',
          'headline2'
        ];

[download]

In reply to Re: Parsing with RegEx into Array by toolic
in thread Parsing with RegEx into Array by mr_p

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.