Louise Leakey was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to Kenyan paleoantropologist, conservationist and politician Richard Leakey and British paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey in 1972, the same year that her paleoanthropologist grandfather Louis Leakey died.
Louise Leakey received her International Baccalaureate from United World College of the Atlantic, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and Biology from the University of Bristol.