This character is regarded as a deity of love. Most likely a member of the setting's ruling pantheon, but could be any character (including a mortal) who is regarded by other characters as a goddess of love.
Male love gods are included in this trope. It is called "Love Goddess" rather than "Love Deity" because the females are much more common.
When a Love Goddess (regardless of gender) is a character, s/he is likely to be in love, be an Ethical Slut, Good In Bed, Hot God, or all of the above. Either way, s/he is also likely to be a Love Interest of other characters.
Historical Domain Characters like Aphrodite and Freyja count as separate examples when they appear as characters in separate works of fiction. For example, Hercules and Xena count, since Aphrodite is a character in some episodes, while Order of the Stick so far does not count: Freyja is a part of the northern pantheon, but unlike Thor, she has so far never really been part of the plot. *
Aphrodite, on the other hand, has made a cameo appearance, but that's just it: a cameo appearance in which her and her entire pantheon were unpersoned.
Contrast War God, this trope's polar opposite. Mythology and media in general tend topair these twoup regardless.
Strictly speaking in terms of historical cultural significance, gods of love were often considered one of the most powerful members of the pantheon. God of love does not just cover romantic love; it covers all types of love, including love for violence, war and alcohol (hence why Aphrodite wandered about the battlefield at Troy), and the obsessive kinds that make you stupid, evil or crazy. This makes them gods you never, ever want to cross.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Urd from Ah! My Goddess likes to consider herself a Goddess of Love, but Peorth is probably a love goddess in a more sexual sense.
Dragon Ball Z: The Namekian Dragon is also the Namekian God of Love. It is worth noting that Namekians are mono-gendered and reproduce asexually, which probably explains why it's the side-portfolio of a low-ranking high end wish-granter, rather than the central role of a major deity like for most human religions.
Suzaku from Fushigi Yuugi is the God of Love. His rival, Seiryuu is the God of War.
Venus, mother of main character Samatarou from Kamisama Kazoku, is the goddess of love.
A slight variation in The World God Only Knows includes Katsuragi Keima, who is the God of Conquest. He is able to make any girl fall in love with him in games and, apparently, in reality too.
The proposed divinity of Yuri in Anatolia Story is linked to Ishtar (see mythology below).
We get a strange example from the Sailor Moon manga and its prequel Codename: Sailor V: Minako may be of human birth, but is openly described by Artemis and others as the goddess of beauty, love and war, unable to ever find her true love (in fact the one person she had ever truly loved died by her hand at the end of Sailor V because he was a Dark Kingdom underling, and it's made clear she would always choose duty over love) but capable of bringing lovers together with her mere presence. Note that she is the only character in the series ever called a goddess or anything divine.
Comic Books
Mistress Love is one of the cosmic forces in the Marvel Universe.
Aphrodite appeared in The Incredible Hercules, but resigned because she no longer felt she could serve in that role. She was succeeded by the siren Venus.
It should be noted that Venus, who starred in her own comicbook series in the 50s, was supposed to be THE goddess of love; that she was a siren with identity issues all along is a later Retcon.
Kislova: goddess of "light, kindness, mercy, growth, life, love, family"
Baalibastus: goddess of "love, beauty, fire, passion, animals, children"
The Pony POV Series takes the approach that Cadence isn't the Alicorn that represents love as canon implies (see Western Animation below), with that role falling to her older sister Venus instead (it's just that Cadence's powers are similar enough that she can remind ponies that they're in love).
The Hallmark version of Jason And The Argonauts leaves out Aphrodite but has Hera ordering Eros to shoot Medea with one of his arrows and make her fall in love with Jason. This version portrays Eros as being made completely of fire.
Literature
In Around the World in Eighty Days, Sir Francis Cromarty points out a statue of Kali, and says that she is the Hindu goddess of love and death. "Of death, perhaps," replies Passepartout, "but of love — that ugly old hag? Never!"
And the troll pantheon has Chondrodite, who makes trolls fall in love by hitting them with a rock.
Everworld gave a cameo to Aphrodite when the group went to Olympus. She basically strutted out, sexfully supported her lover Ares in an argument, and then strutted away, having basically made the male protagonists temporarily forgotten their own names. Meanwhile Eros hovers nearby and makes lewd comments at April.
There's also Hel, who could be called a sex goddess. In the most horribleway possible. Half of her body is the most magically irresistible woman possible, while the other half is a corpse.
One of the Sabrina the Teenage Witch novelizations "All You Need Is A Love Spell" has a family from Greece move to Westbridge. They turn out to be Mars and Venus and their son Cupid. Venus is portrayed as stunningly beautiful but a complete airhead and quite manipulative. Cupid meanwhile is actually being manipulated by his parents into thinking that Sabrina is his Psyche from mythology. He also misuses his powers to make the wrong couples fall in love at school.
Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, as a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, includes the primordial Ungit as a love goddess, and the God of the Mountain, as a love god.
These shows also feature her son Cupid (portrayed by Karl Urban), and an Alternate Universe where Ares is the God of Love.
Hathor pops up in a season 1 episode of Stargate SG-1.
In Supernatural, angels of love are called "Cupids", who manifest as nude men rather than diapered babies.
Cupid: (While hugging Castiel) Love is more than word to me you know. I love love. I love it and if that's wrong I don't wanna be right.
Charmed had an two-part season finale where the girls were given the powers of the Greek gods, with Phoebe as the goddess of love. Men fell in love with her instantly and she basically created a harem-cult when the power was going to her head.
The series also shows Cupids a few time, who are basically spirits who spread love. Phoebe ends up marrying one.
Vanna White played Venus in a forgettable 1988 romantic comedy TV movie titled (what else?) Goddess of Love.
Classical Mythology has two or four depending on whether or not you consider the Roman pantheon to be separate or the same pantheon with different names:
Aphrodite in Greek Mythology. As much a goddess of lust as of love—or as we put it in describing the war she started, the goddess of mad hot sexx0rs— encouraging people to get it on as much as possible whenever and wherever they can, which is how she started the Trojan War.
Some theorists divided Aphrodite into two aspects or personas, Aphrodite Urania, the "heavenly Aphrodite" of sublime love, and what in the Roman version was called Venus Vulgivaga, the "Venus of the people" who was in charge of purely sexual love. In some versions Aphrodite had a dark aspect, for instance in Sparta she was portrayed wearing armour and one of her epithets was Androphonos "the man-killer".
Venus (in the Roman version)
Eros (or Pothos) in Greek Mythology. Aphrodite's son, sent (sometimes reluctantly) to put his mother's nefarious plots in action. Portrayed much more sympathetically than his mother.
Depends on who tells the story. In Hesiod's Theogony, Eros is one of the primal gods (brother to Gaia and Tartaros) and thus older than Aphrodite. Also in most myths Eros engages in all kinds of mischief without needing Aphrodite's orders to do so. The story of Eros and Psyche, where he is portrayed as her reluctant servant, is so late that it can be considered literature more than actual mythology.
Amor (or Cupid(o)) (in the Roman version)
There were also a few less well-known love deities, for instance Anteros, the god of requited love who was particularly associated with homosexual love, and Himeros, god of sexual desire. There were also some minor deities belonging to Aphrodite's train or sometimes assisted her, most notably the three Graces and Peitho, goddess of persuasion (who helped Aphrodite to get Helena in bed with Paris).
Dionysos or Bacchus, while not a god of love per se, was god of ecstasy, which included sexual ecstasy, as became evident in the Bacchanalia.
The Babylonian Ishtar - and her Sumerian predecessor Inanna - was a goddess of love and war. Cynics might argue that those aren't all that inappropriate together, though; and as would Shakespeare and a number of others say, "All's fair in love and war."
In Voudun/Voodoo, Erzulie Dantor is the lwa of love. (There is one God in the Voudun pantheon, and the lwa are intermediaries between him and the mortal world: they have distinct, multifaceted personalities, like the Greek Gods, but are considered more like the equivalent of angels).
The related religion Santeria, a blend of Catholicism and the religion of the African Yoruban people, has Oshun (also spelled Oxun). She's the orisha (a divine intermediary similar to lwa) of romantic and sexual love: people concealing Santeria under the guise of Catholicism represent her with a figure of the Virgin Mary.
Armenian pagan mythology had the goddess Astghik.
Hindu Mythology has at least two. First is Kamadeva, who's equivalent to Eros. Other is Lakshmi, who's also associate with fortune, wealth and wisdom.
Buddhism has an interesting version: the demon king is named Mara, which means "death," but can also be called Kama or Mara-Kama, with kama meaning "love." He basically symbolizes everything that can keep someone from enlightenment, and tried to tempt the Buddha from meditation with his three daughters, Taṇhā (Craving), Arati (Boredom), and Raga (Passion). However, the Buddha only saw them as decrepit old hags, and his resilience was enough to earn their praise.
The Dungeons and DragonsForgotten Realms setting has several Goddesses of Love, including:
Sune (humans)
Hanali Celanil (elves)
Sharindlar (dwarves)
Sharess - an aspect of Shar, strangely, but the goddess of lust, love, and sensual fulfillment
Some sources cast her as the Realms' version of Bast, who fell under Shar's influence at some point in the past but was liberated during the Time of Troubles (explains why she's also the goddess of cats). The fourth edition campaign guide mentions her as an exarch (basically semi-divine assistant) of Sune, not Shar.
Generic Dungeons and Dragons (works not specific to any certain setting) have a lot of them:
Ai Ch'hing: Kara-Turan goddess of love, marriage
Evening Glory (Libris Mortis), lesser goddess of love, beauty and immortality through undeath.
Iallanis, lesser goddess of good giants, love, forgiveness, mercy and beauty.
Isis (also known as Ishtar): Mulhorandi goddess of weather, rivers, agriculture, love, marriage, good magic.
Kiltzi: Maztican god of health, love, happiness, children
Lastai (Book of Exalted Deeds), demigoddess of pleasure, love, and passion.
Sehanine: Unaligned goddess of Illusion, Love and the Moon. Seasonal god of autumn and patron of elves.
Sheyanna Flaxenstrand, intermediate gnome goddess of love, beauty and passion.
Warhammer 40000 has two gods of love: One god of sexual love, and one god of parental love. These gods are named Slaanesh and Nurgle, and with Warhammer 40K being the Crapsack World that it is, both gods are genocidal soul-devouring demon-lords with maximized Squick factor.
The Dark Eye has at least two: Travia for familiar love (and home and hearth), and Rahja for romantic love and lust (passion, wine and horses, too)
Theatre
The Musical Once On This Island features four main gods, including Erzulie, the goddess of love.
In The Gamers Alliance, Hivena is the Goddess of Love and Fertility. She is quite amoral, willing to use mortals as pawns for her own sinister ends.
Aphrodite and her eternally adolescent son Eros in Thalia's Musings. Aphrodite's preferred lover and one of Eros' possible fathers is, of course, Ares.
Western Animation
In Disney's Hercules animated series, Aphrodite appears as a secondary character once in a while. Her main trait is her Ear WormTheme Tune.
