Richard Henderson (April 20, 1735 – January 30, 1785) was an American jurist, land speculator and politician who was best known for attempting to create the Transylvania Colony in frontier Kentucky.

Henderson was born in Virginia Colony, but his family moved to Granville County, North Carolina, when he was a child.

After a brief career in law, on August 27, 1774, Henderson organized a land speculation company with a number of other prominent North Carolinians.

In order to facilitate settlement, Henderson hired Daniel Boone, who had hunted extensively in Kentucky, to blaze the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into the Transylvania land purchase.

Despite those efforts, Congress was unwilling to act without the consent of Virginia and North Carolina, both of whom claimed jurisdiction over the region in question.

In 1778, Henderson briefly returned to the bench but resigned a short time later to pursue more land deals.

In 1779–80, he headed another group of settlers into the Cumberland Valley in Tennessee and founded the settlement Fort Nashborough (present-day Nashville) in the French Lick area.

In 1779, Judge Henderson was appointed one of six commissioners to run the line between Virginia and North Carolina into Powell's valley.

He served as a captain (1779–1781) in the Granville County Regiment of the Hillsborough District Brigade in the North Carolina militia in the Revolutionary War.

[citation needed] One of his sons, Leonard Henderson, was a Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court (1829–1833).

Richard's other son, Archibald Henderson, was a legislator representing Rowan County, North Carolina.

[10] Ashland plantation house, Henderson's childhood home in North Carolina, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.