Smaranda Gheorghiu (5 October 1857 – 26 January 1944) was a Romanian poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, educator, feminist and traveler. She wrote under a number of pseudonyms and is perhaps best known under the moniker Maica Smara (Mother Smara), which was given to her by Veronica Micle.
An early Romanian feminist, she wrote both fiction and non-fiction works with a feminist slant in which she argued against the prevailing views of the time, which held women to be intellectually inferior to men. Smara traveled extensively and recorded her experiences in several volume of travel literature. For her work as a teacher and her efforts to reform the education system, she is sometimes given the sobriquet ”Educator of the People”.