diff --git a/r/NAMESPACE b/r/NAMESPACE
index 21f88b4180d24..d49255f781f94 100644
--- a/r/NAMESPACE
+++ b/r/NAMESPACE
@@ -112,6 +112,7 @@ S3method(infer_schema,ArrowTabular)
 S3method(infer_schema,Dataset)
 S3method(infer_schema,RecordBatchReader)
 S3method(infer_schema,arrow_dplyr_query)
+S3method(infer_schema,data.frame)
 S3method(infer_type,ArrowDatum)
 S3method(infer_type,Expression)
 S3method(infer_type,blob)
diff --git a/r/R/schema.R b/r/R/schema.R
index 1ad18e314191e..ac0604b2b345c 100644
--- a/r/R/schema.R
+++ b/r/R/schema.R
@@ -285,6 +285,9 @@ infer_schema.Dataset <- function(x) x$schema
 #' @export
 infer_schema.arrow_dplyr_query <- function(x) implicit_schema(x)
 
+#' @export
+infer_schema.data.frame <- function(x) schema(!!!lapply(x, infer_type))
+
 #' @export
 names.Schema <- function(x) x$names
 
diff --git a/r/tests/testthat/test-schema.R b/r/tests/testthat/test-schema.R
index db91cee330960..b1dc06592955e 100644
--- a/r/tests/testthat/test-schema.R
+++ b/r/tests/testthat/test-schema.R
@@ -295,9 +295,14 @@ test_that("schema name assignment", {
 
 test_that("schema extraction", {
   skip_if_not_available("dataset")
+
   tbl <- arrow_table(example_data)
+  expect_equal(schema(example_data), tbl$schema)
   expect_equal(schema(tbl), tbl$schema)
 
+  expect_equal(schema(data.frame(a = 1, a = "x", check.names = FALSE)), schema(a = double(), a = string()))
+  expect_equal(schema(data.frame()), schema())
+
   ds <- InMemoryDataset$create(example_data)
   expect_equal(schema(ds), ds$schema)