Ethel Winifred Bennett Chase (19 December 1877 – 26 August 1949) was an American botanist, a professor of botany and the dean of women at what is now Wayne State University.

[1] As a result of her mother dying while Chase was still a toddler, she was brought up by her maternal grandparents in La Porte.

[5] It was also in 1903 that Chase assisted Harriet Waterbury Thomson with an ecological survey of Huron River.

[2] In around 1905 Chase met a fellow teacher, Bernice Leland, who would become her lifelong friend and with whom she would travel and botanise.

[8][9] In 1909 Tilden invited Chase and Leland to accompany her, her mother and her aunt on a botanising trip to the South Pacific.

[2][10] The women began their expedition in late 1909 from San Francisco, travelling on the ship Mariposa to Auckland, New Zealand.

The party then proceeded to gather herbarium specimens down the length of New Zealand from Auckland to Stewart Island.

[2] Chase spent a month on Grand Manan Island in 1938 collecting specimens with a view to investigating plant associations.