Anstrude was the daughter of Blandinus and St. Salaberga of Laon — the Merovingian-period abbess who had established the great women's abbey of Notre-Dame de Laon around 650 on the rock of Laon (the episcopal city of northern France).
Educated at her mother's abbey from childhood, Anstrude succeeded Salaberga as abbess of Notre-Dame de Laon around 670, governing the women's monastic community of the rocky episcopal city for nearly four decades.
Her brother Baldwin, a young Merovingian noble, was murdered around 680 by political enemies — likely associates of Mayor of the Palace Ebroin, the brutal ruler of Neustrian Francia. Anstrude herself was repeatedly targeted by the same enemies, who attempted to depose her from the abbacy and seize her abbey's lands.
She preserved Notre-Dame de Laon through the late-Merovingian political chaos until her death around 709, leaving the continuous women's monastic community of Laon — which survived through the Carolingian and Capetian centuries and contributed to the medieval cathedral school of Laon (one of the most important pre-university theological centres in 11th–12th-century Europe).