Magdalene Margrethe Bärens (née Schäffer) (30 September 1737 – 6 June 1808) was a Danish artist.

She was one of the first professional female artists in Denmark, and the first woman to be elected into the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Bärens was born as the child of Elisabeth Hochkirch and the royal stable master and respected horse expert Johann Hermann Schäffer.

She displayed an early talent in drawing, and her father, who assisted the sculptor Jacques-François-Joseph Saly in illustrating the anatomy of horses, encouraged this, while her mother was very negative about her becoming anything else than a wife.

After her marriage to the official Johan Georg Bärens in 1761, she initially stopped all artistic activity.