Dorothea Friederike von Schlegel (née Brendel Mendelssohn; 24 October 1764 – 3 August 1839) was a German novelist and translator.

She met the poet and critic Friedrich von Schlegel in the salon of her friend Henriette Herz in July 1797, after which Dorothea divorced Simon on 11 January 1799.

As the daughter of a member of the German literary establishment, Moses Mendelssohn, Dorothea was surrounded throughout her life by poets, critics, musicians, novelists, and philosophers of Europe.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was her father's closest friend and colleague, and the Emancipation and secularization of the Jews and Jewish culture was a direct outcome of their work.

For some Jews, she may be a less than admirable figure as well, having left her Jewish husband, violated her divorce settlement, and converted first to Protestantism, and finally to Catholicism.

The daughter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI's finance minister, de Staël witnessed the collapse of the Bourbons and the French Revolution.