Catherine Virlouvet (born 13 February 1956) is a French historian, a professor of economic and social history of ancient Rome.
In 2011, she was appointed director of the École française de Rome, the first woman ever to hold that post.
A former student of the École normale supérieure de Fontenay-aux-Roses [fr] (1976), and agrégée d'histoire, she supported a thesis on Roman history entitled Tessera frumentaria: les procédures de distribution du blé public à Rome de la fin de la République au Haut-Empire (Tessera frumentaria: the procedures for distributing public wheat in Rome from the end of the Republic to the Early Empire) in 1986.
She was appointed a professor of ancient history at the Aix-Marseille University in 1999, and heads the École française de Rome since September 2011.
A student of Claude Nicolet, she specialized in economic and social history of Rome at the end of the Republic and under the High Empire.