In 1511, with help from relatives, he was sent to the Lateinschule (grammar school)[c] in Heilbronn (150 km west of Wemding), where Konrad Költer, the Rektor (1492–1527), also recognised his abilities.

[9] At Erfurt, he matriculated in the Faculty of Arts, and by the 1516–7 winter semester had obtained his Baccalaureus artium, enabling him to teach, and he returned to Wemding to open a private school, at the age of 17.

There he studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew under, Johann Reuchlin and Jacob Ceporinus together with some philosophy and botany, and obtained his Magister Artium on 17 January 1521.

The university was firmly Roman Catholic and carefully monitored the religious practices and opinions of its professors, creating problems for Fuchs' Lutheran views.

[6][7][3] While working at Ansbach, Fuchs began his long career of scientific publications, beginning with his Errata recentiorum medicorum (Errors of modern doctors)[13] in 1530, which he dedicated to his new patron.

In this list of 60 "errors", Fuchs took a stand on the controversy between "Arabist" and Greek medical traditions, siding solidly with the latter, and pointing out the contradictions.

[16] Like his medieval predecessors and his contemporaries, Fuchs was heavily influenced by the three Greek and Roman writers on medicine and materia medica, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and Galen.

[1][18] Fuchs argued in favour of a return to using herbes medicinales ("simples"), in contrast to the arcane and often noxious "compounds" of medieval prescribing.

[9] Fuchs, together with Brunfels and Bock, published herbals, and their joint efforts marked a mid-sixteenth century German botanical renaissance, each acknowledging the contributions of the others.

[21] De historia is Fuchs' major work, a large book about plants and their uses as medicines (a herbal) first appearing in Latin in 1542, and being rapidly translated into other languages.

Although the text is largely borrowed from earlier authors, and is not based on any system of classification, with its 512 plates it set a new standard in botanical illustration.

There is a Fuchsien- und Kräutermarkt (fuchsia and herb market), some local businesses are named after Fuchs,[24] and there is a Leonhart-Fuchs School.

[26] Fuchs' name is preserved by the plant Fuchsia,[31] discovered in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean in 1696/97 by the French scientist and Minim friar Charles Plumier.

[32][33] Fuchs is also recognised in the specific epithet of the a plant widespread over Europe and northern Asia: the common spotted orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii.