Costa Rican botanist. Dora Emilia Mora de Retana was a student of Rafael Lucas Rodríguez, who first introduced her to the study of botany. A talented student she soon displayed an interest in the study of orchids going on to become highly influential in Costa Rican botany. For a long time after Rodríguez she was the only Costa Rican orchidologist with an academic background in the field of botany.

Mora worked as director of the Jardín Botánico Lankester for 22 years, beginning in 1979, and her influence was enormous in converting the garden into an important academic centre, particularly for orchidology. She achieved this largely through fostering a positive working environment for students, employees and other orchid enthusiasts. The American orchidologist John Atwood described the garden as "visibly thriving despite dauntingly severe budget constraints" and here she cultivated her live orchid collection from which she made descriptions and illustrations. Atwood worked describing new species in Costa Rica, mostly in the genus Maxillaria, and almost always worked in collaboration with Mora. Their work together culminated in the illustration of some three hundred Costa Rican orchid species published in the Icones Plantarum Tropicarum and from which they created a volume on the Maxillariinae and Oncidiinae for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Along with her Costa Rican colleague Joaquín Garcia Castro she published a Lista actualizada de las orquídeas de Costa Rica (1992) which listed 1,416 species, showing an increase from 959 species known in Costa Rica in 1937. She is honoured by the epithet Sobralia doremiliae Dressler (1995).

Sources:
Atwood, J., 2001, "Dora Emilia Mora de Retana, a rememberance" Lankesteriana 2: 9
Ossenbach Sauter, C., 2003, Breve historia de la Orquideología en Costa Rica. Universidad de Costa Rica.