Vera Francevna Mencikova (Russian: Вера Францевна Менчик, Vera Frantsevna Menchik; Czech: Věra Menčíková; 16 February 1906 – 26 June 1944), was a Russian-born Czechoslovak chess player who primarily resided in England. She was the first and longest-reigning Women's World Chess Champion from 1927 to 1944, winning the championship a record eight times primarily in round-robin tournaments. In an era when women primarily competed against other women, Menchik was the first and only woman competing in master-level tournaments with the world's best players.

Menchik was born in Moscow to a Czech father and English mother. She began playing chess competitively in school at age 14 not long before the Russian Revolution led her family to leave Russia and move to England in 1921. She joined the Hastings Chess Club in 1923, where she began training with James Drewitt and Géza Maróczy. Menchik established herself as the best female player in the country in 1925 by defeating the British women's champion Edith Price in two matches, and then the world by winning the inaugural Women's World Chess Championship in 1927.

Menchik began competing in master-level tournaments in 1928. Following her first big success at Ramsgate in 1929 when she shared second place with Akiba Rubinstein, she was regularly invited to these elite events for the next decade, including the local Hastings Congress. Her best result in the Hastings Premier tournament was in 1931/32 when she defeated future world champion Max Euwe and Mir Sultan Khan. Late in her career, Menchik won a lone Women's World Championship match against Sonja Graf, the next-leading female player of her era. Menchik was active until her death in 1944, when she was killed in a German air raid that destroyed her home during the Second World War.

Menchik was the dominant female chess player before the war, winning at least 59 games in a row at the Women's World Championship tournaments. Highlights of her successes against male players included two victories and a positive score against Euwe and a positive score in 29 known games against George Thomas, who received the International Master (IM) title. Master-level players that Menchik defeated were said to be members of the Vera Menchik Club, which included six players who received the Grandmaster (GM) title or the honorary equivalent. The trophy for the winning team at the Women's Chess Olympiad is named the Vera Menchik Cup in her honour.

Vera Mencikova was born on 16 February 1906 in Moscow to Olga (née Illingworth) and František Menčík, who were English and Czech respectively. She had a younger sister Olga who was born a year later and also became a chess player. Her mother and father both worked for estate owners who were members of the Russian nobility. Her mother was a governess who acted as a private tutor for the owners' children while her father was the manager of their estates. Her mother's parents already lived in Russia, where her mother's father Arthur worked as a cotton manufacturer. Vera's father came to Russia in 1904 after an invite from his uncle to work as a mechanic at his textile factory. Her father later owned a mill and resumed working as a mechanic. Menchik and her family lived in a large six-room flat and had an above-average standard of living.

Menchik was taught how to play chess by her father at age nine. When she was eleven, the Russian Revolution that started in 1917 began to reshape her life. Her family was forced to share the extra space in their flat with the impoverished residents from the lower floors of their building. Menchik switched her education from a private girls' school to a Soviet public school, and her father's mill was seized. At her new school, the students started a chess club in her last year in Moscow. Menchik joined the club and played her first tournament there at age 14 with other students and teachers, none of whom were women or girls. Although the tournament was not completed, Menchik would have finished in second or third place. She stated that the tournament "gave birth to [her] sporting spirit". Not long after, Menchik left Russia in 1921 amidst her parents splitting up and their family having already been forced to move into a different home. She and her sister stayed with their mother and moved to Hastings on the southeastern coast of England to live with their maternal grandmother Marie, who had already left Moscow for Hastings because of the war. Meanwhile, her father moved back to Bohemia to live in his childhood home in Bystrá nad Jizerou.

When Menchik arrived in England, she could only speak Russian. She began to focus more on chess in part because she did not need to know English well to play. Menchik joined the Hastings Chess Club in March 1923 at age 17. The club was highly renowned, having already begun to host the Hastings International Chess Christmas Congress, an annual tournament that featured some of the best players in the world. She had considered joining the club for over a year before finally doing so. Menchik's first coach at the club was James Drewitt, the club champion that year. In the later part of the year, she began taking private lessons with Géza Maróczy, a Hungarian who later became one of the inaugural players to be awarded the Grandmaster (GM) title in 1950. This coaching made her one of the only female chess players at the time to partake in formal training. Menchik was only able to work with Maróczy until early 1924 when he left England to go to the United States. At this point, she resumed training with Drewitt. Although she only trained with Maróczy for a short time, she credited him with inspiring her to try and compete at a higher level.

Menchik began competing regularly in chess tournaments in her first few months at the Hastings Chess Club in 1923, starting with an intra-club match between the ladies team and a team of third class players. She first represented Hastings in the Sexton Cup inter-club competition that June, playing on the 28th and final board. A few months later in September, she began playing at the county level for East Sussex on the 39th board out of 60. The most significant tournament she entered that year was a first class section of the 1923/24 Hastings Christmas Congress, which was above the level of second class at which she had been playing in the prior months and two levels below the renowned highest international level. Although she finished in joint seventh place out of ten players with a score of 3½/9, she made a draw against Edith Price, the two-time reigning British women's champion.