Most of the coumarins have been found useful as non-linear optical chromophores. The four novel water-soluble coumarin-based compounds (OC6, NC6, OC7, and NC7) and the metallic compounds of NC7 with different metal cations (Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Fe2+, and Zn2+) have been investigated by carrying out density functional theory (DFT). Our DFT calculations revealed that the second-order nonlinear optical properties have a pronounced enhancement by means of the introduction of π-conjugatd electron donor (dimethylamino phenyl alkynyl) in 7-position of the coumarin ring and metal cations, especially for transition metals. The further investigations of the larger first hyperpolarizability (βtot) reveal that the NC7*Fe2+ and NC7*Zn2+ present the larger values as 1.151 × 10−27 and 1.083 × 10−27 esu owing to the lower transition energies and larger oscillator strengths of crucial electronic transitions. Moreover, time-dependent DFT results show that the large intramolecular charge transfers exist in the NC7*Fe2+ and NC7*Zn2+. In addition, the natural bond orbital analysis demonstrated that the second-order stabilization energies is from the lone pair (LP) orbital on O atom to the LP* orbital of metal cations interaction correlate with the O-Mn+ atomics distance. On the other hand, the atoms in molecules analysis showed that the O-Mn+ interactions can be characterized by the presence of a bond critical point (BCP) and the O-Fe2+ and O-Zn2+ interactions have partially ionic and partially covalent bonds rather than an electrostatic character for O-Mn+ (Na+, K+, Mg2+ and Ca2+). In addition, the delocalization indices of O-Mn+ bonds correlate reasonably well with electron density, kinetic and potential energy densities in these complexes. Thus, we hope this research will introduce a new relation between the structure and the property of chromophore nonlinear optical activity.