Her father ran a timber trading company in Overschie, and her uncle is the photographer Piet van Leeuwen (born 1942).

[4] She studied handicrafts and textile art at the teacher training college in Delft from 1984 to 1989, and ceramic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam from 1989 to 1993 under Jan van der Vaart, and Henk Trumpie.

In 1996, Van Leeuwen was nominated by Thimo te Duits for the NPS Cultuurprijs 1996, a competition between young unknown artists which was aired on national television.

[7][8][1] Van Leeuwen received a number of grants from the Mondriaan Fonds, the Dutch fund for visual art and cultural heritage.

[14] In the 2010 exhibit in the Kunsthal, a selection of the modern ceramic art collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was shown with works of multiple generations of Dutch ceramists.