Sarah Bedell Smith (born May 27, 1948) is an American journalist and biographer.

She is the daughter of Ruth (Kirk) and James Howard Rowbotham, a brigadier general and businessman.

[8] She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College and Master of Science from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she won the Robert Sherwood Memorial Travel-Study Scholarship and the Women's Press Club of New York Award.

Smith has written biographies of several notable persons, including television executives, socialites, politicians, and the British royal family.

As a result of her 2012 biography of Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, Smith served as playwright Peter Morgan's consultant on the London and New York productions of The Audience, his award-winning drama about Queen Elizabeth II and her prime ministers, starring Helen Mirren.