In 1960, Leith moved to London to attend the
Cordon Bleu Cookery School and then began a business supplying high-quality business lunches. This grew to become Leith's Good Food, a party and event caterer. In 1969, she opened Leith's, her
Michelin-starred restaurant in
Notting Hill, eventually selling it in 1995. In 1975, she founded Leith's School of Food and Wine, which trains professional chefs and amateur cooks. and Prue Leith Culinary Institute in South Africa. Odd Plate Restaurant was renamed Prue Leith's Restaurant. The first woman appointed to the British Railways Board in 1980, Leith set about improving its much-criticised catering. The catering division,
Travellers Fare, was detached from the
hotels business in 1982 with outlets created, including Casey Jones and Upper Crust. Leith left British Rail in September 1985. Concurrently with running her business, Leith became a food columnist for, successively, the
Daily Mail,
Sunday Express,
The Guardian and the
Daily Mirror. Aside from writing 12 cookery books, including ''Leith's Cookery Bible
, she has written eight novels: Leaving Patrick
, Sisters
, A Lovesome Thing
, Choral Society
, A Serving of Scandal
, The Food of Love: Laura's Story
, The Prodigal Daughter
, and The Lost Son
. The last three form the Angelotti Chronicles
or Food of Love
trilogy. Her memoir, Relish'', was published in 2013. Her first television appearance was in the 1970s as a presenter of two 13-episode magazine series aimed at women at home, made by
Tyne Tees Television. She was a last-minute replacement for
Jack de Manio, and with no experience and a director who liked everything scripted, including interviews, she disliked the experience. Later, in the 1980s, she was the subject of two television programmes about her life and career: the first episode of
Channel 4's
Take Six Cooks and the BBC's
The Best of British, a series about young entrepreneurs. In 1999, she was one of the Commissioners on Channel 4's Poverty Commission. She returned to television to be a judge on
The Great British Menu for 11 years until 2016 and a judge for
My Kitchen Rules, which she left to replace
Mary Berry in
The Great British Bake Off. In January 2026, She announced her retirement from the Bake Off in an instagram post. She has been involved in food in education. When chair of the
Royal Society of Arts she founded and chaired the charity Focus on Food (now part of the
Soil Association) which promotes cooking in the curriculum. She also started, with the charity Training for Life, the Hoxton Apprentice; a not-for-profit restaurant which for ten years trained the most disadvantaged long-term unemployed young people. Until 2015, she was a member of the Food Strand of the grant-giving foundation, Esmée Fairbairne. From 2007 to 2010, she was the Chair of the
School Food Trust, the government
quango largely responsible for the improvement in school food after
Jamie Oliver's television exposé of the poor state of school dinners. The Trust (now the Children's Food Trust) also set up and runs Let's Get Cooking, an organisation of over 5,000 cooking clubs in state schools, of which she is a patron. She is vice-president of The Sustainable Restaurant Association; a trustee of Baby Taste Journey (an education charity concerned with healthy food for infants); Patron of The Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour, Sustain's Campaign for Better Hospital Food, and the Prue Leith Chef's Academy in her native South Africa. She has also been active in general education, chairing Ashridge Management College (2002–07); 3E's Enterprises (an education company turning round failing schools and managing academies (1998–2006) and Chairman of Governors at the secondary school
Kings College in Guildford (2000–07). She has also been involved in many diverse organisations: she chaired the Restaurateurs Association (1990–94); she was a member of the Investors in People working group; she chaired the
Royal Society of Arts (RSA; 1995–97); and
Forum for the Future (2000–03). She was a director of the housing association,
Places for People (1999–2003) and a member of the Consumer Debt Working Group that contributed to the
Conservative Party's 2006 policy document
Breakdown Britain (2004–05). She has also been one of the voices in favour of
Brexit, defending her choice, although lately voicing concern over lowering of food standards. While at the RSA, she led the successful campaign to use the empty plinth, now known as the Fourth Plinth, in
Trafalgar Square to house changing sculptures or installations by the best contemporary artists. Leith has been a non-executive director of
British Rail;
British Transport Hotels;
Safeway; Argyll plc, the
Leeds Permanent Building Society;
Whitbread plc;
Woolworths plc; the
Halifax; Triven VCT; Omega International plc; and Belmond Hotels Ltd (formerly Orient Express Hotels) and is a director and investor in several start-up companies. In July 2017, she was installed as the Chancellor of
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. In December 2021, she was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's
Desert Island Discs. In February 2024, Leith's ten-part cookery series ''Prue Leith's Cotswold Kitchen'' began airing on
ITV1. Following a second series in 2025, a third series began airing in early 2026. In 2025, Leith participated in the
sixth series of
The Masked Singer as "Pegasus". She was eliminated in the second episode. ==Personal life==