In 1996 Leinarte earned her PhD in History at Vytautas Magnus University, and became full Professor in 2008. She held the position of Chair of the Gender Studies Center at Vilnius University for almost twenty years. Leinarte has won several prestigious international academic awards, the Fulbright (2002-2003) and a scholarship of the American Association of University Women (2005-2006).

Leinarte writes for the Lithuanian public broadcaster, Lithuanian Radio and Television (lrt.lt) on human rights, gender equality, feminism, and issues of nationalism and history.

Leinarte is the author of the monograph The Lithuanian Family in its European Context, 1800-1914: Marriage, Divorce and Flexible Communities (Palgrav Macmillan, 2017), awarded the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) Book Prize 2018 (Honourable Mention).

Her previous book was devoted to women’s experiences of everyday life during Soviet times. Experiencing a totalitarian system as an insider as well as researching it opened a path for a better understanding of the Soviet past. After the break from the USSR, she interviewed number of women and wrote the oral history book, Adopting and Remembering Soviet Reality: Life Stories of Lithuanian Women, 1945–1970 (Rodopi, 2010).

Her historical knowledge of European family history covers more than two hundred years, resulting in the co-edited book (with Jan Kok), Cohabitation in Europe: a Revenge of History? (Routledge, 2017).

The most recent of her honors is the Cross of Officer of the Order for Merits to Lithuania, by the order of the President of the Republic of Lithuania in 2019.

Dalia Leinarte was born in the medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Trakai, in 1958. She grew up in the former Soviet Union, and met the restoration of the Independence of Lithuania as a young woman in 1990. She has two daughters, Dalyte and Emilija.