The Woman Whose Footprints on Chang'an Avenue Were Deepest — Chen Lihua's Legendary Farewell

From “last princess” to Beijing magnate

Chen Lihua (陈丽华), the founder and honorary chair of Fuhua International Group (富华国际集团) and the patron of the China Zitan (Rosewood) Museum (中国紫檀博物馆), has died in Beijing at 85. The funeral notice gave no medical cause; it has been reported that she had been fighting cancer for two years. Her passing closes a life that read like a parable of China's reform-and-opening era: a purported descendant of the Yehenara clan (叶赫那拉氏) who rose from poverty to become one of the country's richest women and a defining private patron of traditional craft.

Building an urban footprint

Chen’s ascent began with a furniture repair stall and, by the 1980s and 1990s, grew into prime property bets on Chang'an Avenue (长安街), Wangfujing (王府井) and Jinbao Street (金宝街). She created Beijing’s first private five‑star club, the Chang’an Club, and assembled a retail corridor now filled with global luxury showrooms — the visible residue of a deal‑making style that mixed boldness, relationships and timing. Forbes and Hurun regularly placed her among China’s richest; Forbes’ mainland list ranked her sixth in 2001 (reported net worth 5.5 billion yuan), and she later topped Hurun’s female billionaire lists with hundreds of billions of yuan in assets at her peak.

A cultural crusade with sawdust and glue

In 1999 Chen spent some 200 million yuan to open the China Zitan (Rosewood) Museum, and she converted much of her remaining business energy into preserving and replicating zitan furniture and Beijing’s wooden architecture. She led projects that replicated city gates and pavilions using traditional mortise‑and‑tenon joinery — no nails, no glue — and her factory produced thousands of pieces, many now in the museum's permanent collection. Zitan craftsmanship was recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2011. It has been reported that she accepted an “Outstanding Women Lifetime Achievement Award” at the United Nations in 2025; she told audiences then that her mission was to carry China’s woodcraft to the world.

Family, asset shifts and a final question

In recent years Chen largely handed business control to her children — her son Zhao Yong runs Fuhua — and, reportedly, sold overseas real estate such as the Park Hyatt Melbourne for over 205 million AUD in 2025, leaving only Beijing Lizhi Huatang Cosmetics Co., Ltd (北京丽质华堂化妆品有限公司) directly under her name. She lived behind her museum, sleeping close to the timbers she loved. The Beijing Overseas Chinese Chamber praised her cultural contributions in its obituary. What remains after such a life? The luxurious storefronts on Jinbao Street and the silent, hand‑fitted beams of a replicated city gate — footprints on Chang'an Avenue, literal and cultural, that will test how private capital and personal passion shape a city’s memory.