Rachel Sarah Herz is a Canadian and American psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, recognized for her research on the psychology of smell.
 Rachel Herz completed her undergraduate degree in psychology and biology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and an MA and PhD in the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto. After completing her PhD in 1992, she won a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Post-Doctoral Award and took her research to the University of British Columbia. In 1994, she received the Ajinomoto USA Inaugural Award for Promising Young Scientists and joined the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia as an assistant member.
 In 2000, Herz joined the faculty at Brown University, first as a member of the Psychology Department and now as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior of Brown University Medical School. She is also part-time faculty in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. Herz is a TED-X speaker and since the mid-1990s, Herz has been consulting for many of the world's leading multinational fragrance and flavor companies and regularly lectures to national and international audiences.
 In 2004 Herz had to change her relationship with Brown University to a more limited involvement so that she could pursue other creative enterprises. It was at this time that she began writing The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (William Morrow/Harper Collins Publishers) as well as working on other means to educate and stimulate the general public about the chemical senses. Her commercial ventures include The Educated Palate.
 Herz has Canadian and American citizenship. Her father was the mathematician Carl S. Herz.
 Her work examines with how language and emotion can affect odor perception and her laboratory has empirically demonstrated the first instance of olfactory illusions created by words alone. Herz also studies how we perceive food and how food-based emotions influence us. Theoretically guided by perspectives from cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, Herz uses psychophysical, self-report, cognitive-behavioral and neurological techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to investigate these topics.
 Herz serves on several advisory boards, including the UK charity for smell loss, Fifth Sense. Herz serves on several advisory boards and councils, including the Smell and Taste Association of North America, the UK charity for smell loss, Fifth Sense [24] , the Association for Chemoreception Sciences (reference: http://achems.org/web/about-committees.php) and OVRTechnology https://ovrtechnology.com/about/ Her research on sensory memory was on display from 2001 to 2006 in a traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibit called "Brain: The world inside your head". She has given numerous interviews, including for: CBC, The Science of the Senses, @Discovery.ca (The Discovery Channel, Canada), The Discovery Channel USA, ABC Discovery News, ABC News, The BBC, National Geographic, NBC Nightly news, Korean Public Broadcasting, ABC The Chronicle, FOX News, National Public Radio, CBS The Early Show. She is also featured in Mystify: Michael Hutchence.