Wireless sensor nodes are made up of small electronic devices designed for detecting, determining, and sending data under severe physical conditions. These sensor nodes rely heavily on batteries for energy, which drain at a quicker pace due to the extensive communication and processing tasks they must carry out. Managing this battery resource is the major challenge in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This work aims at developing an improved performance and energy-efficient low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (IPE-LEACH) that can extend the lifespan of networks. This paper proposes a novel LEACH protocol that uses the moth flame optimization (MFO) algorithm for clustering and routing to increase the longevity of the sensor network. IPE-LEACH proved to have a better cluster-head (CH) selection technique by eliminating redundant data, thereby extending the network lifetime. IPE-LEACH was compared with four other existing algorithms, and it performed better than: original LEACH by 60%, EiP-LEACH by 45%, LEACH-GA by 58%, and LEACH-PSO by 13.8%. It can therefore be concluded that IPE-LEACH is a promising clustering algorithm that has the potential to realize high flexibility in WSNs in case the CH fails.