Lélia Gonzalez (1 February 1935 – 10 July 1994) was a Brazilian intellectual, politician, professor, anthropologist and woman human rights defender.

The daughter of a black railroad worker and an indigenous maid, she was the second youngest of eighteen siblings, including footballer Jaime de Almeida, who played for Flamengo.

As a secondary school teacher at CAp-UERJ (part of Rio de Janeiro State University) during the dictatorship of the sixties, she made her philosophy classes a space of resistance and sociopolitical critique, which influenced the thoughts and actions of her students.

Her writings, simultaneously permeated by the scenarios of political dictatorship and the emergence of social movements, reveal her interdisciplinary commitment and portray a constant concern in articulating the broader struggles of Brazilian society with the specific demand of blacks and especially of black women[2] In 1982, together with Carlos Hasenbalg, she published Lugar de Negro[3] and in 1987, she published the book Festas populares no Brasil.

She was quoted by the African bloc Ilê Aiyê in two editions of the Carnival of Bahia: in 1997, as part of the story "Black Pearls of Knowledge", and in 1998 with "Candace".