Early-onset severe preeclampsia is associated with significant maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality especially in low-resource settings, where women have limited access to antenatal care. This dataset was generated from a retrospective cross-sectional study carried out at Mpilo Central Hospital, covering the period February 1, 2016 to July 30, 2018. The aim of the study was to determine the incidence of early-onset severe preeclampsia and eclampsia, and associated risk factors in a low-resource setting. The reason for examining the incidence of preeclampsia specifically in a low-resource setting; was to document it as women in these settings appear to suffer from poor outcomes. The dataset contains data of 238 pregnant women who had a diagnosis of early onset severe preeclampsia/eclampsia. There were 243 babies from singleton and twin gestations. There were five sets of twins. There were 21,505 live births during the study period giving an incidence of 1.1%. The dataset contains data on maternal socio-demographic, signs and symptoms, therapeutic interventions and mode of delivery, adverse outcomes characteristics, and fetal characteristics. This large dataset can be used to calculate the incidence and risk factors for adverse maternal and fetal outcomes or develop predictive models in severe preeclampsia/eclampsia.