Leoba was born the only child noble parents named Dynno and Aebba, who dedicated her to the Church. She entered the double monastery of Wimbourne in southern England at a young age, where she apparently grew into an exemplary nun. According to her hagiographer Rudolph of Fulda,** it was here that she had a dream that a fellow nun interpreted as foreshadowing her future leadership. It was also around this time that she started a correspondence with her kinsman Boniface.
When Boniface began setting up monasteries in Germany as part of his missionary work, he sent back to England for Leoba, wanting her assistance in his missionary work. When she arrived in 748, he had the monastery of Tauberbischofsheim and all nuns under his authority as Archbishop waiting for her leadership. She trained the future abbesses of other monasteries, acted as the authority when questions came up regarding the monastic rule. In later years, she founded two monasteries of her own.
She also took an active role as a missionary. Her vita shows a close relationship with the people of the area and her miracles in life seem geared towards confirming their faith. She maintained relationships with people beyond the local villages, maintaining a particularly close friendship with Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne. She traveled widely, visiting monasteries under her authority, Fulda, and the court of Charlemagne. When Boniface departed for Frisia*** he left her and a man named Lul, his successor as Archbishop, as his deputies.
Near the end of her life she retired, leaving her work in the care of others, and moved with a few other nuns to an estate near Mainz, where she died in 782. Though Boniface had ordered that she be buried in the same tomb as him at Fulda, she was buried near him but not with him.
*Also known as Lioba and Leofgyth.
**Who was, admittedly, writing fifty years after her death and had his own agenda. (Don’t all hagiographers?)
***Where he would be martyred.
Rudolph of Fulda, "Life of Leoba," 9th century - Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Lioba/Leobgytha/Leoba, abbess of Tauberbischofsheim - Epistolae
Cotter-Lynch, Margaret. "Rereading Leoba, or Hagiography as Compromise." 2010 - University of Iowa
Anglo-Saxon Portraits: Leoba - BBC Radio
Leoba - Wikipedia