Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen (5 September 1796 – 8 December 1862) was a Belgian lawyer and liberal politician known as the founder of the Free University of Brussels.

He was born in Brussels, where he lived his whole life, and part of a Catholic family of lawyers from the region of Haacht.

Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen, his godfather, had been the last headmaster (rector) of the Old University of Louvain before it was closed by the French revolutionary troops.

Another descendant is Marie-Pierre, Countess Bernard d'Udekem d'Acoz, cousin by marriage to Queen Mathilde of Belgium.

The French Revolution's influence was immense, certainly in his birth city, Brussels, where his father had established himself as a lawyer.

He attended school at the Lycée impérial and studied law at the Ecole de Droit, founded by Napoleon I of France in Brussels.

The first liberal electoral association in Belgium, the Alliance of Brussels, grew out of his lodge Les Amis Philantropes.

He was convinced that religion was essential for people (most of the Belgian liberals and freemasons of that time were, to some degree, religious, even if they had to break with the Catholic Church).

Still, Verhaegen remained religious, attending Sunday mass and financing church constructions in Brussels.

Twenty years after his death, the lodge Les Amis Philantropes erected a statue of Verhaegen in front of his grave.

In 1865, his admirers erected a statue of him, which now stands by the main building of the ULB at Avenue Franklin Roosevelt in Brussels.

The foundation of the Université Libre de Bruxelles must be seen within the social and political situation of Belgium in those days.

The Belgian bishops founded a new Catholic University of Mechelen to regain the influence on higher education they lost under French and Dutch rule.

Auguste Baron, who had become a member of the Les Amis Philantropes, could convince Verhaegen of his idea, and on 24 June 1834, Verhaegen presented the plan in a speech during a banquet of his Lodge: If we speak about the light of the century, we let thus everything to do promote it, but also, in the first place, protect it because our enemies are ready to extinguish it.

Being able to examine what is of great value for mankind and for society, free from each politically and religious authority (...) to reach towards the sources of truth and the good, (...) see here your Majesty, the role of our university, its reason for existence.