List of Famous people born in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Ogün Temizkanoğlu is a Turkish former international footballer. He played mostly for Trabzonspor and Fenerbahçe as a central defender. He also played for Konyaspor and Akçaabat Sebatspor. He retired after terminating his contract with Akçaabat Sebatspor on 12 August 2005.

Günter Pröpper is a retired German footballer who played as a forward. Born in Dorsten, Pröpper started his career in amateur football before joining VfL Osnabrück in 1964. He spent three seasons with the club, moving on to Rot-Weiss Essen in 1967. Two years later he joined Wuppertaler SV, where he played for the remainder of his career.

Sabine Thillaye is a French-German entrepreneur and politician who has been serving as a member of the French National Assembly since 18 June 2017, representing the 5th constituency of the departement of Indre-et-Loire. She was elected as a member of La République En Marche!, but left the party in 2020 and was one of the 17 initial members of the new Ecology Democracy Solidarity group in the National Assembly.

Kerstin Garefrekes is a German footballer. She plays as a midfielder or striker for 1. FFC Frankfurt.

Dietmar Nietan is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1998 till 2002 and since 2005.

Willi Gundlach is a German choral conductor and academic. He taught at the music department of the Technical University of Dortmund. He researched and edited works by Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn. He founded and conducted a chamber choir at the university and recorded with them, including operas for the Kurt Weill Foundation. After his retirement from teaching, he cofounded and organised a concert series at St. Peter, Syburg, including organ concerts and vocal concerts with notable performers.

Reinhold Ewald is a German physicist and ESA astronaut.

Maxim Richarz is a German singer and songwriter. He began performing in 2005 and released his most recent singles in 2014. Though called a Reggae artist he is hesitant to refer to himself as such and does more contemporary work in recent years.

Rolf Eberhard Buch is a German business executive. In 2013, he was appointed CEO of the real estate company Deutsche Annington, which, following the takeover of GAGFAH in the year 2015, was renamed Vonovia. Previously, Buch held an executive position at Arvato.

Silvia Wadhwa is a German financial journalist. She previously worked for CNBC Europe in Frankfurt. She reported daily from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and provided German language business news updates for the N24 news channel. Wadhwa was also the network's European Central Bank correspondent, reporting from the bank's headquarters on days of Interest rate decisions and attending the subsequent press conferences. In December 2007 she began writing a blog, €urocentric, for CNBC.com.