Violeta Dinescu (born 13 July 1953) is a Romanian composer, pianist, and academic teacher, living in Germany since 1982.

Mai (The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas), a children's opera after Erich Kästner was composed in 1986,[1] Eréndira after a short story by Gabriel García Márquez in 1992 and performed at the third Munich Biennale, Schachnovelle (The Royal Game) after Stefan Zweig in 1994.

[8] Since 1986, she has been teaching at German music academies in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Bayreuth, and since 1996 as a professor of Applied Composition at the University of Oldenburg.

[2] There she started in 1996 to invite composers to a yearly Komponisten-Colloquium, in 2009 among others Jean-Luc Darbellay and Graham Waterhouse.

Major commissioned works include Akrostichon and L‘ORA X for orchestra, an oratorio for Pentecost, Pfingstoratorium, music for the F. W. Murnau silent film Tabu and the ballets Der Kreisel and Effi Briest.