David James O'Donoghue (22 July 1866 – 27 June 1917) was an Irish biographer and editor.

[4] He was the third of nine children, and had four brothers, Thomas, John, James, and Edmund, and four sisters, Mary, Ellen, Katherine, and Agnes.

He began his journalistic work by writing for the Dublin papers upon subjects relating to Irish music, art, and literature.

A founder-member of the Irish Literary Society in London, he was also vice president of the National Literary Society, Dublin, and the compiler of a biographical dictionary, The Poets of Ireland (1891–93; revised edition, 1912), with entries on 2,000 authors.

He wrote biographies on William Carleton (1896) (whose sisters he rescued from poverty), Richard Pockrich (1899), and Robert Emmet (1902).