Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville (Saint-Mihiel, France, June 18, 1739 – Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue, 1780), avocat at the Parlement of Paris, is a French botanist who volunteers to be sent to Mexico in 1776 to steal the cochineal insect valued for its scarlet dye

In his clandestine bioprospecting piracy, he works without official papers and would have been ruthlessly treated had he been caught.

He succeeds in naturalizing the insect, and the prickly pear (Opuntia) "nopal" cactus on which it depends, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue.