[10] Upon her return in the fall of 1894, she was assigned to the same residence hall dining table as incoming student Catharine Bunnell (niece of future Yale benefactor John William Sterling), and the two became lifelong friends.

[12] After leaving Bryn Mawr College in 1896, Gilmour taught at the Academy of St. Aloysius in New Jersey and worked at various editing jobs.

Noguchi resumed his relationship with Washington, D.C. journalist Ethel Armes[14] and with the onset of the Russo-Japanese War, began making plans to return to Japan in the fall.

In 1912 as a result of a relationship with a man whose identity remains mysterious (Isamu Noguchi biographer Masayo Duus speculates that he was one of Léonie's students)[18] she gave birth to a daughter, Ailes Gilmour.

She and Ailes continued to reside in Japan until 1920 when they returned to the United States, settling in San Francisco, and later moving to New York, where she successfully dissuaded Isamu from his plan to attend medical school and redirected him to the artist's vocation she had chosen for him when he was still an infant.

In December 1933 she was admitted to New York's Bellevue Hospital with pneumonia and died on New Year's Eve of coronary thrombosis with arteriosclerosis as a contributory factor.

It has been speculated that she may have co-authored or authored some works attributed to him, such as The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, and there is little doubt that much of Noguchi's best writing was accomplished with her editorial assistance.

Gilmour's "Founding a Tent-Home in California," for example, shows turn-of-the-century Los Angeles from the perspective of a hapless, idealistic new arrival.

"[23] This evidently included the brief account of her childhood entitled "St. Bridget's Child,"[24] as well as "The Kid Chronicle that Was Not Written" (describing her meeting and correspondence with Charles Warren Stoddard)[25] and "Inside Looking On: When East Weds West.

In 2009, Japanese filmmaker Matsui Hisako (松井久子) began production of Leonie, a film based on Gilmour's life.