Margherita Malatesta of the House of Malatesta (1370 – 28 February 1399) was the wife of Francesco I Gonzaga of the powerful House of Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua in the north of the Italian peninsula, whom she married in 1393.

[2] She and her spouse were already related through the marriage of his sister, Elisabetta, to her brother, Carlo.

The network of related women Margherita Malatesta, Alda d'Este, and Elisabetta and Margherita Gonzaga are considered to have tied together the courts of Mantua, Ferrara, Rimini and Pesaro.

[6] Margherita brought the hereditary disease of rickets to the Gonzagas, which manifested itself periodically in the lords of Mantua until the 16th century.

She died on February 28, 1399, and was interred in Church of San Francesco in Mantua, in the mausoleum of the Gonzagas.