  Using $10.1\times10^{9}$ $J/\psi$ events produced by the Beijing Electron
Positron Collider (BEPCII) at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=3.097~\rm{GeV}$
and collected with the BESIII detector, we present a search for the rare
semi-leptonic decay $J/\psi\to D^{-}e^{+}\nu_{e}+c.c.$. No excess of signal
above background is observed, and an upper limit on the branching fraction
$\mathcal{B}(J/\psi\to D^{-}e^{+}\nu_{e}+c.c.)<7.1\times10^{-8}$ is obtained at
$90\%$ confidence level. This is an improvement of more than two orders of
magnitude over the previous best limit.
