Rheinböllen lies some 10 km as the crow flies southwest of the Middle Rhine at Bacharach in the southeast Hunsrück.

The town is found in the transitional zone between (to the east) the Binger Wald (Bingen Forest) and (to the south) the Soonwald, a heavily wooded section of the west-central Hunsrück that since 2005 has belonged to the Naturpark Soonwald-Nahe.

The prefix Rhein— suggests some kind of historical dependence on Bacharach, to whose Vogtei Rheinböllen may well once have belonged, before it passed to the Counts Palatine.

Through the ages, the name for Rheinböllen has taken many spellings: Rinbul, Rinbulle, Rynbuhel, Reynbullen, Rymbul, Rymbulen, Rynbule, Rinbelle, Bollen, Bullen, Rinbulde, Rheinbullen.

Shortly after 1900, workmen digging near the railway station found a sharpened, polished stone axe, the earliest evidence of human habitation in what is now the town.

Archaeological finds in the area of the Altdorf ("Old Village", a triangle formed by the streets Simmerner Straße, Poststraße and Bahnhofstraße) point to Celtic beginnings.

Street names used today, such as Wehr ("Defence") and Hinterster Graben ("Hindmost Moat") bear witness to a girding wall that once stood around the village.

Rheinböllen was the main centre in the so-called "Old Court" (Altes Gericht), the ancient core of Comital-Palatine lordship on the Hundisrück.

This "Old Court" likely had arisen by 1142, when Hermann von Stahleck was awarded the County Palatine by his brother-in-law, King Conrad III.

After Hermann von Stahleck's death, Emperor Barbarossa transferred the County Palatine in 1156 to his stepbrother Konrad, who also held rights to estates in the Nahegau, to which Rheinböllen also almost certainly belonged.

The oldest known document about the town is a lease, dated 1 May 1309, concluded by Johann von dem Stein, serving as the Burgrave at Böckelheim, and the Schultheiß of Rheinböllen.

To curry the Rhenish princes' favour, Louis pledged, right after his regency began in 1314, the Altes Gericht together with Castle Fürstenberg and the settlements of Diebach and Manubach to Archbishop of Mainz Peter.

The settlement was a main centre in the County Palatine – and was likely at that time said to be a town – until 1359, through a pledge of 1,800 Florentine guilders, Simmern became part of the holding and was later raised to seat of the Amt.

In the same year, King Louis forwent all claims to, among other things, the "half" of Rheinböllen, referring the pledgeholders, John of Bohemia and Archbishop Baldwin, to Count Palatine Rudolf and the two Ruperts.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Rheinböllen was a postal station on the route between Innsbruck and Mechelen, nowadays in Austria and Belgium respectively.

The reader furthermore learns something about the Palatinate woodlands, the iron-ore mining in the Ledenwald (forest) and the Guldenbach (brook), which has this name only from Rheinböllen on down, being called the Volkenbach farther upstream.

In 1804, the French emperor visited the Hunsrück in person, and young citizens from Rheinböllen, Dichtelbach, Ellern, Mörschbach and Kleinweidelbach had to ride out to meet him.

When allied troops crossed the Rhine on New Year's Night 1813–1814 near Kaub, France's hegemony in the region fell, and the Rhineland became Prussian.

The oldest gravestone that can be deciphered at the Jewish graveyard on the road to Bacharach gives 11 September 1867 as Gottlieb Rauner's date of death.

Older people in Rheinböllen can still remember names such as Hessel, Michels, Süßmann, Keller, Grünewald and Kann.

[6] The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results: Rheinböllen's mayor is Bernadette Jourdant (formerly Oberthür), and her deputies are Bernd Raab, Siegmund Kappel and Erich Rott.

The Foundation's goal is to maintain its institution and building, which in great part are under monumental protection and worthy of being considered monuments and stand as cultural icons far beyond their home region (especially the chapel with its fixtures and paraments), and, for public and social purposes, especially accommodating and caring for the elderly, those who need care and the handicapped, to put itself at their disposal, as well as to present the whole complex's importance to art history and cultural history with its equipment and furnishings.

On 1 November 2006, the Franziskanerbrüder, Betriebs u. Beschäftigungs gGmbh (“Franciscan Brothers, Operation and Activity Not-for-Profit Corporation”) took over sponsorship of the nursing home in Rheinböllen.