Leona is the feminine of Leon and Leo — from the Latin leo, meaning "lion." Leona means literally "lioness."
Leona was popular in the early 20th century, peaked at #189 in 1925, and faded. It has been returning in the 2010s. The British singer Leona Lewis (born 1985) and the New York hotelier Leona Helmsley (1920-2007) are notable bearers. Today Leona sits in the U.S. top 500.
Leona does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
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In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Leona reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.