Leopold Kronenberg was born in Warsaw, on March 24, 1812. He laid the foundations for the financial power of the Kronenberg family. Leopold’s father, Samuel, was a Jewish banker from a wealthy family of Jewish rabbis. Leopold was one of eight siblings.

 He graduated from the gymnasium run by the Piarist Order and passed his final exam at the Warsaw Lyceum. Then he studied in Hamburg and Berlin, and returned to Warsaw after the fall of the November Uprising. In 1833, he was enlisted into the register of Warsaw merchants. He took up many financial operations and earned his fortune by the lease of a tobacco monopoly, which previously brought a significant fortune to Leon Newachowicz (Kronenberg is also linked with Newachowicz by the palace on Długa Street in Warsaw, which they both owned).

 Kronenberg converted to Protestantism and in 1851 he opened a banking house, which granted loans mainly for agricultural and industrial enterprises. Modernizing agriculture was the true passion of the banker. He talked to the landowners about the necessary social reforms and renting out peasants. He was socially active in many areas, including the stock exchange board. As a supporter of organic work, building a strong economy and rational reforms, he supported Aleksander Wielopolski’s reforms in the Kingdom of Poland.

 He also supported the assimilation of Jews and saw anti-Semitism as a factor serving the occupying powers to divide Polish society. In 1861, he joined the City Delegation, which gathered opponents of the unprepared uprising against Russia. However, the uprising broke out, and its collapse forced Kronenberg to withdraw from public activity, impossible under the conditions of the liquidation of the autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland. Nevertheless, he managed to build many sugar factories, finance the construction of Vistula River Railways and establish the School of Economics in Warsaw.

 He died in 1878 and was buried at the Evangelical Reformed Cemetery in Warsaw.