This letter describes the first experimental study of an erbium-doped multimode fiber amplifier. For a 2 m length of a 13-mu-m-core erbium-doped fiber, we measured gain as high as 16 dB at a signal wavelength of 1543 nm, with approximately 100 mw pump power (980 nm). For these same test conditions, the smallest excess noise factor beta was 42.