[20] Von der Leyen's father's grandparents were the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952) and Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), an American who descended from a planter family in Charleston, South Carolina.

Her American ancestors played a significant role in the British colonisation of the Americas, and she descends from many of the first English settlers of Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Barbados, and from numerous colonial governors.

At the height of the fear of communist terrorism in West Germany, she fled to London in 1978 after her family was told that the Red Army Faction (RAF) was planning to kidnap her due to her being the daughter of a prominent politician.

[44][45][46] In 2015, researchers collaborating at the VroniPlag Wiki reviewed von der Leyen's 1991 doctoral dissertation and alleged that 43.5% of the thesis pages contained plagiarism and in 23 cases citations were used that did not verify claims for which they were given.

[55] In 2003, von der Leyen was part of a group assigned by the then-opposition leader and CDU chairwoman Angela Merkel to draft alternative proposals for social welfare reform in response to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's "Agenda 2010".

[64] In speaking out for increasing the number of childcare nurseries, for the introduction of a women's quota for listed companies' main boards, for gay marriage and a nationwide minimum wage, von der Leyen made enemies among the more traditionalist party members and won admirers on the left.

[78] Within her first year in office, von der Leyen visited the Bundeswehr troops stationed in Afghanistan three times and oversaw the gradual withdrawal of German soldiers from the country as NATO was winding down its 13-year combat mission ISAF.

[82] Following criticism from German officials of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's escalation of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict in August 2015, von der Leyen decided to let Germany's three-year Patriot missile batteries mission to southern Turkey lapse in January 2016 instead of seeking parliamentary approval to extend it.

[89] Under von der Leyen's leadership, the German parliament approved government plans in early 2016 to send up to 650 soldiers to Mali, boosting its presence in the U.N. peacekeeping mission MINUSMA in the West African country.

[95][96][97] Germany considered increasing the size of the army,[98] and in May 2016 von der Leyen announced it would spend €130 billion on new equipment by 2030 and add nearly 7,000 soldiers by 2023 in the first German military expansion since the end of the Cold War.

[107] In October 2014, von der Leyen pledged to get a grip on Germany's military equipment budget after publishing a KPMG report on repeated failures in controlling suppliers, costs and delivery deadlines, e.g., with the Airbus A400M Atlas transport plane, Eurofighter Typhoon jet and the Boxer armoured fighting vehicle.

[111] During her May 2015 visit to India, von der Leyen expressed support for a project initiated by the Indian government to build six small German TKMS diesel-electric submarines for a total cost of $11 billion.

[137] At the press conference announcing her nomination, European Council President Donald Tusk noted von der Leyen's intention to retain Commission First-Vice-President Frans Timmermans during her administration.

[144] Von der Leyen unveiled the new proposed EU Commission's structure (whom she deemed to be a "geopolitical" one)[145] on 10 September 2019, renaming a number of posts of the College of Commissioners to make them sound less formal and more goal-oriented, including the controversial portfolio for "Protecting our European Way of Life",[146][147] a vice-presidency responsible for the coordination of migration, security, employment and education policies.

[155] In March 2020, von der Leyen's Commission turned down the idea of suspending the Schengen Agreement in order to introduce border controls around Italy, at that time the centre of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe,[156][157][158] The decision drew criticism from some European politicians.

[162] Von der Leyen supported the EU's imposition of sanctions against Belarus after the security services violently cracked down on street protests in Minsk and elsewhere against the 26-year authoritarian rule under President, Alexander Lukashenko.

[177][178] In April 2021, The New York Times reported that von der Leyen had exchanged electronic correspondence with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla negotiating terms of sale of the COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union.

Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides later informed the European Parliament that von der Leyen played no (formal) role and "was not involved in the negotiations on the Covid vaccine contract".

[186] On 8 April 2022 in the midst of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Von der Leyen travelled to Kyiv (which had seen open hostilities only days earlier) to lend her support to the beleaguered Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his countrymen.

She was accompanied by Josep Borrell, who expressed "confidence that EU states would soon agree to his proposal to provide Ukraine with an additional €500 million to support the armed forces in their fight against the Russian army".

[205] In April von der Leyen issued a video statement celebrating Israel's 75th Independence Day, noting that "the Jewish People could finally build a home in the Promised Land", adding that "You have literally made the desert bloom".

[207] In October 2023, von der Leyen condemned "the military operation by Azerbaijan against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and reaffirmed the need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia".

[216] Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared that she wrote to von der Leyen "to ask her to come with me to Lampedusa to personally realize the gravity of the situation we face, and to immediately accelerate the implementation of the agreement with Tunisia by transferring the agreed resources".

[225] She is, or has been, also a member of several boards of trustees: Ursula von der Leyen assumed her office as Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in 2005.

Amidst protest (particularly from the conservative wing of the CDU), she introduced the Child Advancement Act [de] (Kinderförderungsgesetz), which reserved 4.3 billion euros for the creation of childcare structures throughout Germany.

[241] Von der Leyen was in charge of the request to ban and rate the Rammstein album Liebe ist für alle da by the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors.

[260] With 2014 marking the centenary of the start of World War I, von der Leyen—in her capacity as defence minister—inaugurated a memorial for the Armistice Day in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire alongside French President François Hollande and North Rhine-Westphalia State Premier Hannelore Kraft, as well as British and Belgian officials.

[265] In an interview with The Guardian days after her election to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission, she stated that the withdrawal deal agreed between Theresa May and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier would remain the basis of any future talks.

[266] In November 2019, at Paris Peace Forum, von der Leyen said that there is need for stable and responsible leadership in Europe and that the bloc must increase foreign policy budget spending by one-third.

[269] They expressed their concerns over the situation in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has detained an estimated one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in re-education camps, subjected them to forced labour, surveillance, and abuse.