diff --git a/doc/whats_new/v0.22.rst b/doc/whats_new/v0.22.rst
index 1089284a9f6a9..1aea9bba2ce8c 100644
--- a/doc/whats_new/v0.22.rst
+++ b/doc/whats_new/v0.22.rst
@@ -60,6 +60,11 @@ Changelog
   parameter called `warm_start` that enables warm starting. :pr:`14012` by
   :user:`Johann Faouzi <johannfaouzi>`.
 
+- |Enhancement| :class:`ensemble.HistGradientBoostingClassifier` the training
+  loss or score is now monitored on a class-wise stratified subsample to
+  preserve the class balance of the original training set. :pr:`14194`
+  by :user:`Johann Faouzi <johannfaouzi>`.
+
 :mod:`sklearn.linear_model`
 ...........................
 
diff --git a/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/gradient_boosting.py b/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/gradient_boosting.py
index 00b5d08278162..3650867b752cc 100644
--- a/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/gradient_boosting.py
+++ b/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/gradient_boosting.py
@@ -5,8 +5,9 @@
 
 import numpy as np
 from timeit import default_timer as time
-from ...base import BaseEstimator, RegressorMixin, ClassifierMixin
-from ...utils import check_X_y, check_random_state, check_array
+from ...base import (BaseEstimator, RegressorMixin, ClassifierMixin,
+                     is_classifier)
+from ...utils import check_X_y, check_random_state, check_array, resample
 from ...utils.validation import check_is_fitted
 from ...utils.multiclass import check_classification_targets
 from ...metrics import check_scoring
@@ -386,15 +387,18 @@ def _get_small_trainset(self, X_binned_train, y_train, seed):
         with scorers.
         """
         subsample_size = 10000
-        rng = check_random_state(seed)
-        indices = np.arange(X_binned_train.shape[0])
         if X_binned_train.shape[0] > subsample_size:
-            # TODO: not critical but stratify using resample()
-            indices = rng.choice(indices, subsample_size, replace=False)
-        X_binned_small_train = X_binned_train[indices]
-        y_small_train = y_train[indices]
-        X_binned_small_train = np.ascontiguousarray(X_binned_small_train)
-        return X_binned_small_train, y_small_train
+            indices = np.arange(X_binned_train.shape[0])
+            stratify = y_train if is_classifier(self) else None
+            indices = resample(indices, n_samples=subsample_size,
+                               replace=False, random_state=seed,
+                               stratify=stratify)
+            X_binned_small_train = X_binned_train[indices]
+            y_small_train = y_train[indices]
+            X_binned_small_train = np.ascontiguousarray(X_binned_small_train)
+            return X_binned_small_train, y_small_train
+        else:
+            return X_binned_train, y_train
 
     def _check_early_stopping_scorer(self, X_binned_small_train, y_small_train,
                                      X_binned_val, y_val):
diff --git a/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/tests/test_gradient_boosting.py b/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/tests/test_gradient_boosting.py
index 86b3eeb239c3d..8c3f2188b7434 100644
--- a/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/tests/test_gradient_boosting.py
+++ b/sklearn/ensemble/_hist_gradient_boosting/tests/test_gradient_boosting.py
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
 from sklearn.ensemble import HistGradientBoostingRegressor
 from sklearn.ensemble import HistGradientBoostingClassifier
 from sklearn.ensemble._hist_gradient_boosting.binning import _BinMapper
+from sklearn.utils import shuffle
 
 
 X_classification, y_classification = make_classification(random_state=0)
@@ -190,3 +191,32 @@ def test_zero_division_hessians(data):
     X, y = data
     gb = HistGradientBoostingClassifier(learning_rate=100, max_iter=10)
     gb.fit(X, y)
+
+
+def test_small_trainset():
+    # Make sure that the small trainset is stratified and has the expected
+    # length (10k samples)
+    n_samples = 20000
+    original_distrib = {0: 0.1, 1: 0.2, 2: 0.3, 3: 0.4}
+    rng = np.random.RandomState(42)
+    X = rng.randn(n_samples).reshape(n_samples, 1)
+    y = [[class_] * int(prop * n_samples) for (class_, prop)
+         in original_distrib.items()]
+    y = shuffle(np.concatenate(y))
+    gb = HistGradientBoostingClassifier()
+
+    # Compute the small training set
+    X_small, y_small = gb._get_small_trainset(X, y, seed=42)
+
+    # Compute the class distribution in the small training set
+    unique, counts = np.unique(y_small, return_counts=True)
+    small_distrib = {class_: count / 10000 for (class_, count)
+                     in zip(unique, counts)}
+
+    # Test that the small training set has the expected length
+    assert X_small.shape[0] == 10000
+    assert y_small.shape[0] == 10000
+
+    # Test that the class distributions in the whole dataset and in the small
+    # training set are identical
+    assert small_distrib == pytest.approx(original_distrib)