Grace Ashcroft^[a] is a character in Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan), a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Grace made her first and only appearance in the 2026 video game Resident Evil Requiem as a playable character alongside Leon S. Kennedy. She is depicted as a technical analyst for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the daughter of investigative reporter and Raccoon City survivor Alyssa Ashcroft.

According to director Koshi Nakanishi, the dual-protagonist structure of Resident Evil Requiem, in which players alternate between Leon S. Kennedy and Grace, was conceived to ensure the game would include slow-paced, horror-focused sections alongside faster-paced action sequences; this allowed the developers to show the differences in experience between Leon and Grace.^[1] Nakanishi stated that Leon's sequences could give players a sense of release following Grace's chapters.^[1] Nakanishi also described that Grace is "the biggest scaredy-cat in Resident Evil history" and stated that they wanted her gameplay in Requiem to highlight on how she have been influenced by his experience in dealing with horrific creatures.^[1][2]

When being pursued by a stalking monster, Grace will visibly stumble in third-person.^[3] Reflecting her timid and fearful nature, Grace has animations such as shaking hands when handling and aiming firearms.^[4] These panicked character animations for Grace align with the "final girl" trope in horror films.^[5] The Requiem team had been working on improving Grace's hair rendering, but they could not achieve their desired visual quality. Development on the hair strand system for longer hair was led by the team working on Pragmata (2026) for that game's android character Diana alongside the RE Engine development team.^[6] This work on Diana's hair rendering in Pragmata was later transferred to Requiem for Grace's hair.^[7] The strand system allows luminescence to realistically shine through Grace's hair and her hair properly reacts in scenes where she is suspended upside down while strapped to a gurney.^[7]

Grace was voiced by an Anglo-American actress Angela Sant’Albano.^[8] Playing the game with a real-life anxiety problem is the scariest the series has ever been, according to Angela, who claimed to have done "a lot of research" on panic disorders.^[9]

Resident Evil Requiem begins with Grace Ashcroft working as a young technical analyst for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She is sent by her superior to investigate a mysterious rash of infections and deaths in Wrenwood, a city nearby to the remnants of Raccoon City. Grace investigates the latest death at the Wrenwood Hotel, where she is captured by Victor Gideon. Victor takes her to the Rhodes Hill Cronic Care Center, where he has overseen human experimentation and the creation of bioweapons. After freeing herself from her restraints, Grace discovers the care center overrun with bioweapons. She encounters Leon S. Kennedy, who is also investigating the mysterious infections as well as Victor Gideon, as well as Emily a young girl who was experimented on and is a clone. As she and Leon escape the care center, Emily is wounded and transforms into a bioweapon. Distraught, Grace willingly travels with Victor Gideon as well as the mysterious Zeno to the ruins of Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corporation's compound, the Ark.^[10]

While there, it is revealed that Grace is the adopted daughter of Oswell E. Spencer, co-founder of the Umbrella Corporation. Later in his life, Oswell had regrets about the human experimentations he had ordered and took in Grace, who was orphaned as an infant, as atonement. Following his death, he gave guardianship of Grace to investigative reporter Alyssa Ashcroft. Victor Gideon mistakenly believed that Oswell had used Grace in his cloning experiments at the Raccoon City Orphanage and that Grace was the key to unlocking a bioweapon capable of mind control called Elpis. Pursuing Grace when she is a teenager, he tracks her and Alyssa to the Wrenwood Hotel, where he kills Alyssa while failing to capture Grace. Back in the Ark, Grace decides to release Elpis, realizing it is not a bioweapon but rather an antiviral to Umbrella's decades-long experiments. As the Ark disintegrates, Victor and Zeno are killed and Grace and Leon are saved by Chris Redfield's team. Elpis is used on Emily, restoring her to a normal human, who Grace subsequently adopts as her daughter.^[10]

Outside of the Resident Evil series, Grace appears in the video game Fortnite Battle Royale (2017).^[11]

Grace's appearance in Resident Evil Requiem received positive reviews from critics who lauded her characterization and relatability. Ashley Bardhan of GamesRadar+ said spending two hours with Grace in Requiem turned her into the most anxious person alive.^[4] According to Dom Peppiatt of Eurogamer, Grace is not only one of the best-developed characters in the series but also a wonderfully timely addition to the Resident Evil protagonist pantheon. The latter half of Requiem is its own thing, and another Grace part that delves a little further into the character we've seen thus far would be a fantastic contrast and tonic to that, according to Peppiaat, who intended Requiem's DLC to be entirely about her.^[12]

Another topic of contention was Grace's appearance in a flashback early in Requiem, where someone claimed that she was controlling her Minecraft server with an iron grip.^[13] Additionally, both users from Reddit discovered that young Grace is a Reddit user who is perusing the r/amateurjournalists subreddit in the flashback clip while she is using her laptop.^[14]