Krieger was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in nursing. She moved to New York City and worked at the Lenox Hill Hospital. In 1962, she became the nursing director at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Staten Island.
Krieger began to develop her ideas about therapeutic touch in the early 1970s. She argued that nurses should use their hands to sense and manipulate the body's energy field in order to promote healing. Krieger's work was controversial, but it also attracted a great deal of attention. In 1979, she published a book called "Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help Others Heal." The book was a bestseller and helped to popularize therapeutic touch.
Krieger continued to promote therapeutic touch for the rest of her life. She lectured, wrote books, and established a foundation to fund research on therapeutic touch. She also served as president of the American Nurses Association.
In 2018, Krieger died at the age of 89 from complications of a stroke. She was a pioneer in the field of holistic nursing and her work has influenced the way that nurses think about healing and care for patients.