Sir Ashton Lever FRS (5 March 1729 – 28 January 1788) was an English collector of natural objects, in particular the Leverian collection.

He opened it to the public in April 1766, in Manchester, moving the museum to his family home at Alkrington Hall, near Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1771.

Captain James Cook was impressed by Lever's collection, and donated objects from his own voyages to the museum.

Both the British Museum and the Empress of Russia declined to buy it, so it was disposed of by lottery: 8,000 tickets were sold at a guinea each.

The winner, James Parkinson, later put the collection up for auction in 1806, when the largest purchasers were the British naturalist Edward Donovan and Leopold von Fichtel, bidding on behalf of the Natural History Museum, Vienna.