Potentially beneficial novel approaches to cancer treatment, particularly for drug-resistant malignancies, include synergistic therapies that combine chemotherapy with photothermal therapy. In our research described here we developed a unique silk protein-functionalized gold nanoparticles (AuNP) formulation for effective combinatorial photothermal therapy (PTT) and chemotherapy against ovarian cancer cells. The main goal of the present investigation was the fabrication of silk protein-functionalized gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) embedded with Dichlororuthenium (II) (p-cymene) (1,3,5-triaza-7-phosphaadamantane) (RAPTA-C) molecules (RC@Au-SF NPs) to improve apoptosis in ovarian cancer cells. The structural and morphological analyses of the prepared nanoformulations confirmed the successful fabrication and uniform distributions of Au-SF NPs with RAPTA-C. We observed the RC@Au-SF NPs showed enhanced toxicity to ovarian cancer cell lines with near infrared (NIR)-light exposure. The RAPTA-C loaded Au-SF NPs significantly improved the internalization of the nanoparticles inside the cells resulting in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and cell apoptosis on ovarian cancer (SKOV-3 & A2780) cells. We suggest the outcome of the developed formulation for anti-ovarian cancer action will be highly promising for future cancer control research.