She grew up in Alsókörtvélyes (now Nižný Hrušov, Slovakia) on the country estate belonging to her father Geyza Moskowitz, a physician who had served as personal secretary to Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy.

She was also a member of the intellectual discussion group known as the Sonntagskreis (“Sunday Circle”) and maintained close friendships with its two principal founders, Béla Balázs and György Lukács.

Both were responsible for her appointment in April 1919, during the Hungarian Republic of Councils, to a position in the Ministry of Education where she was charged with developing a new national arts curriculum.

In 1919 Lesznai emigrated to Vienna along with sons George and Andrew and her companion Tibor Gergely (1900–1978), an artist and illustrator fifteen years her junior whom she knew from the Sunday Circle.

With regard to the recent revival of interest in Lesznai's life and work, Judith Szapor writes: “Young scholars, especially Petra Török and Csilla Markója […] consider the novel a masterpiece and argue that it should be valued equally for its historical sweep as a family saga, the psychological depth of her characters, and as a documentary source of the early-twentieth-century progressive scene it depicts.”[3] Anna Lesznai died on October 2, 1966, in New York City.