Riverwood is a suburb in southwestern Sydney, New South Wales. It is located on the East Hills railway line 18 kilometres from Sydney's Central Business District, west of Narwee and east of Padstow, and was first developed during World War 2, when much of the area was the site of a large military base.

After the war the military departed, and the timber and corrugated iron barrack buildings (some of which survived into the 1990s) were converted into public housing. The suburb - which was then known as Herne Bay - quickly developed an unsavoury reputation for poverty, overcrowding and violence, and its name was later changed to Riverwood in large part to remove the stigma associated with living there.

From the 1950s onwards, purpose-built utilitarian public housing apartment blocks and freestanding bungalows replaced most of the former military buildings on the northern side of the railway line, while the southern part of the suburb was mostly pivately developed.