Lena Moncrieff Townsend (3 November 1911 – 17 November 2004) was a British Conservative politician in London and served briefly as Leader of the Inner London Education Authority.
She was born in Egypt, to an Irish father and a Scottish mother, both of whom were born in India. She studied at Oxford, and for a time worked as a fashion writer. She had three children.
During the Second World War she was an organiser for the Women's Voluntary Service and the Land Army. She married twice, firstly Henry Peat, and then John Townsend. In 1955 she was first elected to the London County Council for her home seat of Hampstead, and took a special interest in the Education Committee. She was chosen to be Leader of the Opposition on the Education Committee from the early 1960s.
Townsend was an unsuccessful candidate in the first Greater London Council election of 1964, being defeated in Camden. Townsend lost her seat in Camden but was elected as an Alderman to the GLC and co-opted to ILEA's Education Committee. She remained as Leader of the Opposition until February 1971 when she resigned, saying that she needed a paying job.
Townsend remained an Alderman of the GLC until 1977 when the Aldermanic system was abolished. She was a member of several bodies, most prominently as a Governor of the London College of Fashion (and Chair of Governors from 1967 to 1986). In Edward Heath's Dissolution Honours list of 1974 she was appointed a CBE. Keeping the links with the country of her birth, she was President of the Anglo-Egyptian Association from 1961 until it was wound up in 1987.