Zoe Leonard was born in 1961 in Liberty, New York. She lives and works in New York.

At age sixteen, Leonard dropped out of high school and began to practice art. She has spent most of her adult life living in New York City, whose built environment has been the subject matter of much of her work. She became well-known internationally following her installation at Documenta IX in 1992.

Over the past three decades, Leonard has produced work in photography and sculpture that has been celebrated for its lyrical observations of daily life coupled with a rigorous, questioning attention to the politics and conditions of image making and display. From her earliest aerial photographs to her images of museum interiors, anatomical models, fashion shows, storefronts and trees, her work reflects on the framing, classifying, and ordering of vision, as well as the physical and social changes of landscapes over time.

Leonard has exhibited widely since the late 1980s and her work has been included in a number of seminal exhibitions including Documenta IX (1992) and Documenta XII (2007), and the 1993, 1997 and 2014 Whitney biennials.

Leonard has had solo exhibitions at MOCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art (2018); Chinati Foundation, Marfa (2015); Camden Arts Centre, London (2012); Dia:Beacon, New York (2008 –11); Dia at the Hispanic Society, New York (2008); Fotomuseum Winterthur (2007); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2007); and Vienna Secession (1997).

Her work has also been presented in a number of group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2019); Phillips Collection, Washington (2019); Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2019); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington (2018); La Triennale di Milano, Milan (2017); Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); MoMA PS1, New York (2013); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2012). Leonard has received numerous honors, including the Bucksbaum Award, Whitney Museum of American Art (2014).