Empress Nam Phương (14 December 1914 – 16 September 1963), born Marie-Thérèse Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan, baptised Marie-Thérèse later Imperial Princess Nam Phương, was the first and primary wife of Bảo Đại, the last emperor of Vietnam, from 1934 until her death. She was also the second and last empress consort (hoàng hậu) of the Nguyễn Dynasty.

Marie-Thérèse Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan was born in Gò Công, a Mekong Delta town in what was then the French colony of Cochinchina, one of the three areas (the others being the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin) that composed the Union of French Indochina.

Her father, Pierre Nguyễn Hữu-Hào, described as a wealthy merchant, had been born into a poor Roman Catholic family in Gò Công. Through an introduction from the Archbishop of Saigon, he became secretary to the billionaire Lê Phát Đạt, Duke of Long-My, and eventually married his employer's daughter, Marie Lê Thị Binh, and inherited his title.

A naturalized French citizen, Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan, who was known as Mariette, studied at the Couvent des Oiseaux, an aristocratic Catholic school located in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, where she was sent at the age of 12.

She was a distant cousin of her future husband, the emperor.

On 9 March 1934, the public announcement of the engagement of Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan and Bảo Đại, King of Annam, was released. (In the 19th century, the occupying French forces had diminished the rank of the country's emperor to king, a situation that was not reversed until 1945.) In it, Bảo Đại stated, "The future Queen, reared like us in France, combines in her person the graces of the West and the charms of the East. We who have had the occasion to meet her believe that she is worthy to be our companion and our equal. We are certain by her conduct and example that she fully merits the title of First Woman of the Empire."

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