Hilda L. Smith (1941 – October 24, 2023) was an American historian who specialized in the gender analysis of political theory and intellectual history.

[1] She was an undergraduate at Missouri State University, trained as a high school teacher, and subsequently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1975.

[2] Her dissertation was titled Feminism in Seventeenth-century England.

[3] Smith was a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she was a humanities administrator.

[2] She specialized in the gender analysis of political theory and intellectual history and the "political, philosophical, and scientific writings of early modern women.