Nicholas Marcellus Hentz (1797-1856) was a French-born entomologist, engraver, and miniature painter who spoke several languages and studied medicine in Paris and at Harvard. He was also the author of several school texts, a treatise on alligators, and a novel, Tadeuskund, the Last King of the Lenape (1825), a fictionalized account of the Paxton massacres on the Pennsylvania frontier. His posthumous Spiders of the United States (1875), a collection of scholarly papers on the subject, long remained a standard in the field.

Born in 1797 in Versailles during the post-revolutionary period, Hentz fled with his family to America in 1816. Hentz had studied medicine in France, and enrolled as a medical student at Harvard in 1820, but soon abandoned his studies. The remainder of his life was spent teaching French and miniature painting, first at Round Hill School for Boys at Northampton, MA. Here he met and married Caroline Lee Whiting, a novelist, in 1824. In 1826 the family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he had accepted a professorship in modern languages. Four years later the Hentzes moved to Covington, Kentucky, where Nicholas conducted a female academy for two years. He found similar employment in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1832-1834; Florence, Alabama, 1834-1843; Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1843-1845; Tuskeegee, Alabama, 1845-1848; and Columbus, Georgia, 1848-1849.

Hentz became a member of ANSP in 1819 and remained so until his death in 1856, illustrating articles published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. While living in Philadelphia he became an intimate friend of Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1778-1846). Being one of the first to study and illustrate spiders, he also developed a lasting friendship and correspondence with Thomas Say (1787-1834). Say had hoped that Hentz would assist him in illustrating American Entomology, but in 1825 it was decided that the task would be impossible with Hentz living in Northampton, MA.

Hentz died in 1856 at the home of a son, Charles, in Florida.