Dame Portugaise (d. ''after'' 1634), was a Luso-African Nhara slave trader. She was likely daughter of a Portuguese man and African woman and established as a slave trader and merchant in

Rufisque Rufisque (; Wolof: Tëngeéj) is a city in the Dakar region of western Senegal, at the base of the Cap-Vert Peninsula east of Dakar, the capital. It has a population of 295,459 (2023 census).

, where she acted as a contact channel between the Portuguese and the African rulers of the region through her connections with both, in effect controlling the entire business between the Africans and the Europeans in the region.Nancy Hafkin, Edna G. Bay,
Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change
' She is the earliest example of the many Euro-African businesswomen who acted as business-agents and diplomats between the Europeans and the African from this point on until the end of the 19th-century.

References

{{reflist 17th-century deaths 17th-century African businesspeople 17th-century businesswomen African slave traders Women slave traders 17th-century slave traders