Two particles, initially in a product state, become entangled when they come together and start to interact. Using semiclassical methods, we calculate the time evolution of the corresponding reduced density matrix , obtained by integrating out the degrees of freedom of one of the particles. We find that entanglement generation sensitively depends (i) on the interaction potential, especially on its strength and range, and (ii) on the nature of the underlying classical dynamics. Under general statistical assumptions, and for short-ranged interaction potentials, we find that decays exponentially fast in a chaotic environment, whereas it decays only algebraically in a regular system. In the chaotic case, the decay rate is given by the golden rule spreading of one-particle states due to the two-particle coupling, but cannot exceed the system’s Lyapunov exponent.