Charles Loring Brace (June 19, 1826 – August 11, 1890) was an American philanthropist who contributed to the field of social reform. He is considered a father of the modern foster care movement and was most renowned for starting the Orphan Train movement of the mid-19th century, and for founding Children's Aid Society.

Brace was born on June 19, 1826, in Litchfield, Connecticut. He was named after his uncle, the lawyer Charles Greely Loring, a defender of fugitive slave Thomas Sims. His mother died when he was 14, and he was raised by his father, a history teacher.

He graduated from Yale College in 1846. He pursued divinity and theology graduate studies at Yale, but left to study at Union Theological Seminary, from which he received his graduate degree in 1849. He was drawn to New York because it was viewed as the center of American Protestantism and social activity. His best friend and brother of his roommate at Yale, Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect, also lived in New York.

In 1852, at the age of 26, Brace, who had been raised as a Calvinist, was serving as a minister to the poor of Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island) and to the poor of the Five Points Mission, when he decided he wanted to pursue his humanitarian efforts in the streets rather than in church. Brace was aware of the impoverished lives of the children in New York City and for this reason he concentrated on improving children's situation and their future. In 1853, Brace established the Children's Aid Society.

In 1854, the Society opened the first of its "newsboys' lodging-houses", which would become one of Brace's most successful projects. These houses provided basic room and board at low prices to homeless children who hawked newspapers on the streets of American cities. Though Brace viewed the newsboys as children in need of the services provided by the houses, they also inspired several of Horatio Alger's stories in which the newsboys' independence and pluck is rewarded with great wealth.

Brace believed that poor, Catholic immigrants were genetically inferior, deeming them "stupid, foreign criminal class" and the "scum and refuse of ill-formed civilization". Some of the children of immigrants had been in trouble with the law. Such was the severity of child poverty in 1854 that the number of homeless children in New York City was estimated as high as 34,000. The police referred to these children as "street rats".

According to an essay written by Brace in 1872, one crime and poverty ridden area around Tenth Avenue was referred to as "Misery Row". Misery Row was considered to be a main breeding ground of crime and poverty, and an inevitable "fever nest" where disease spread easily. Many of the children he deemed orphans were not orphaned at all, and when families of origin tried to keep their children, they were rebuffed.

Orphan asylums and almshouses were the only "social services" available for poor and homeless children. Brace did not believe that these were worthwhile institutions because they merely served the purpose of feeding the poor and providing handouts. He felt that such institutions only deepened the dependence of the poor on charity. Brace was also influenced by the writings of Edward Livingstone, a pioneer in prison reform who believed that the best way to deal with crime and poverty was to prevent it. Brace focused on finding jobs and training for poor and destitute children so they could help themselves. His initial efforts in social reform included free kindergartens, free dental clinics, job placement, training programs, reading rooms, and lodging houses for boys. However, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders feared that Brace was trying to "rescue" children from Catholic and Jewish faith.