His reign is recognized for the extensive administrative, military, education, and fiscal reforms he instituted, conquests of Champa states and expansion of Đại Việt territory in the south, and a cultural revolution that replaced the old aristocracy with a generation of literati scholars.

Lê Tư Thành was born on the 20th of the 7th lunar month (August 25th in Gregorian calendar) in the third year of Đại Bảo (1442).

[citation needed] A legend surrounding his birth is that, his mother Ngô Thị Ngọc Dao, was bestowed a Tiên đồng (仙童) by the Jade Emperor in her dream, and started to become pregnant with Tư Thành the following day.

Officials in Kinh Dien such as Tran Phong noticed that Binh Nguyen Vuong had a dignified appearance and was more intelligent than other people, so they considered him an extraordinary person.

[6] The leaders of the counter-coup which removed and killed Nghi Dân were two of the last surviving friends and aides of Lê Lợi - Nguyễn Xí and Đinh Liệt.

Lê Thánh Tông introduced reforms designing to replace the Thanh Hoá oligarchy of Dai Viet's southern region with a corps of bureaucrats selected through the Confucian civil service examinations.

[7] Following the Chinese model, he divided the government into six ministries: Finance, Rites, Justice, Personnel, Army, and Public Works.

By 1471, the kingdom employed more than 5,300 officials (0.1 percent of the population) into the bureaucrat army, equally divided between the court and the provinces, with at least one supervising officer every three villages.

[11] A national-wide census was conducted in 1490, reported approximately 8,000 village-level jurisdictions throughout the country including the thirty-six urban wards that lay between the royal compound and the Red River at Dong Kinh, the only city in the country;[12][13] with the total population was approximately 3.7 million people, the Red River delta had been the most densely inhabited region of Southeast Asia in the early-modern era.

"[16] During the reign of Thánh Tông, Vietnamese export porcelains from Hải Dương kilns were found as far as West Asia.

[18] In 1461 he warned the provincial officials not to pursue the insignificant trade/commerce to ensure internal welfare and prohibit foreigners from entering the kingdom.

[19] After the defeat of Champa in 1471, he sent large groups of ethnic Vietnamese, including prisoners and criminals, to settle in the new conquered territories.

He expanded the national university, perfected examinations, encouraged literature, patronized the publication of mathematical and scientific treaties.

[13] In 1460, he ordered Confucian scholar Ngô Sĩ Liên (1401–1489) to compile an official national history book, and in 1479 the chronicle Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư was finished, and was presented to the emperor.

"[24] In 1472, as Vietnamese pirates attacked Chinese and merchant ships in Hainan and the coast of Guangzhou, the Ming emperor called on Thánh Tông to end such activities.

[28][29] A 1499 entry in the Ming Shilu recorded that thirteen Chinese men from Wenchang including a young man named Wu Rui were captured by the Vietnamese after their ship was blown off course while traveling from Hainan to Guangdong's Qin subprefecture (Qinzhou), after which they ended up near the coast of Vietnam, in the 1460s, during the Chenghua Emperor's rule (1464–1487).

The local ethnic minority Tusi chief Wei Chen took him into custody, overruling objections from his family who wanted to send him back to Vietnam.

Wei Chen planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese but told them the amount they were offering was too little and demanded more however before they could agree on a price, Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate Li Guangning and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the Ming palace at the Directorate of Ceremonial (silijian taijian 司禮監太監).

[47][48] These 100 men were taken prisoner around the same time as Wu Rui and the historian Leo K. Shin believes all of them may have been involved in illegal trade instead of being blown off course by wind.

"[53] Back in 1448, the Vietnamese had annexed the land of Muang Phuan in what is today the Plain of Jars in northeastern Laos, and Thánh Tông made that territory a prefecture of Đại Việt in 1471.

The elephant being a potent symbol of kingship was common throughout Southeast Asia, and Thánh Tông requested the animal's hair to be brought as a gift to the Đại Việt court.

[54] Thánh Tông also realized that Laos was expanding its authority over Tai peoples who had previously acknowledged Vietnamese suzerainty and had regularly paid tribute to Đại Việt.

[55] In fall 1479, Thánh Tông led an army of 180,000 men marched westward, attacked Muang Phuan, Lan Xang and Nan.

[64] Lê Thánh Tông claimed as tributaries the countries of Melaka, Java, Siam, Laos and Champa in "The Regulations concerning Tribute Missions from Vassals to the Imperial Capital" (Chư phiên sứ thần triều cống kinh quốc lệ) in 1485.