Schneider served as a Democratic State Senator from Maine's 32nd District, representing part of Penobscot County, including the population centres of Orono and Lincoln.
She was first elected to the Maine State Senate in 2004 after serving from 1996 to 2004 in the town government of Orono.
Schneider and her family moved from Lexington, Virginia to Massachusetts a year after her birth in 1963.
Schneider's parents were active in the peace and equal rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
She graduated from an all-girls high school in Lower Manhattan and met her husband while studying at the University of Colorado.