Elisabeth Berenberg

Elisabeth Berenberg (2 December 1749 – 16 January 1822) was a Hamburg heiress, merchant banker and a member of the Berenberg family. She was the last male line member of the Flemish-origined Hanseatic Berenberg family in Hamburg, and ancestral mother of the von Berenberg-Gossler family, the current owners of Berenberg Bank. She is also noted as the only woman ever to serve as a partner and take an active leadership role (1790–1800) at Berenberg Bank since the company was established in 1590 by her family.

She belonged to the Berenberg family, a Flemish-origined family from Antwerp in today's Belgium, who came as religious refugees to Hamburg in 1585, where they founded Berenberg Bank and became, together with the closely related Amsinck family, one of the two most prominent families of the city-state's ruling class of Hanseaten. She was the daughter of owner of Berenberg Bank Johann Berenberg (1718–1772) and Anna Maria Lastrop (1723–1761), and was named for her grandmother Anna Elisabeth Amsinck (1690–1748). Her grandfather Rudolf Berenberg was elected a Senator in 1735 and her great-grandfather Cornelius Berenberg had become an hereditary grand burgher in 1684 and developed the Berenberg merchant house into a highly successful merchant bank. She was also descended from numerous other prominent merchant and banking families, such as the Welser family.

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