Starry Lee

Lee was born on 13 March 1974 in Hong Kong into a working-class family and was raised in a public housing estate.^[1] She attended Ping Shek Estate Catholic Primary School and FDBWA Szeto Ho Secondary School,^[2] where she was a head prefect in Form 6.^[3]

She attained A grades for accounting and history in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. When considering the two subject areas as career paths, her mother persuaded her to become an accountant because professionals led a more stable life.^[4] She studied accounting at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, during which she was part of the debate team.^[5][6]: 41 She graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1996.^[6]: 41

After graduation, Lee became an accountant and worked for KPMG in Hong Kong.^{[7]: 46 [8]} Before working for KPMG Hong Kong, Lee had also been employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Crowe Hong Kong.^[9]

She then obtained a Master of Business Administration from the University of Manchester in 2010 and a doctoral degree in laws from Tsinghua University in 2024.^[9]

In the 1990s, Lee received political mentorship from Li Lin, a pro-Beijing district councillor.^[7] At a self-improvement course, Lee met lawyer and DAB member Chiu Tse-kuen, who was running in the 1999 district council elections for To Kwa Wan North, where Lee lived. He invited her to campaign and visit contituents with him. However, when submitting his candidacy, Chiu discovered that he had not declared a change of address and was therefore ineligible to stand. Lee's efforts on the campaign impressed the party leadership, leading her to run in place of Chiu as a pro-Beijing independent.^[10]: 233 A member of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, she campaigned as a unionist.^[11]

After a month of campaigning,^[10]: 233 Lee was elected with 965 votes (70.6%), more than double the votes for incumbent candidate Lam Ming, who received 402 votes (29.4%).^[12] At 26, Lee became the youngest district councillor.^[8]

She defended her seat with a wide margin in the 2003 elections with 1,392 votes (72.7%), defeating Richard Tse, who took 523 votes (27.3%).^[13] That was despite a political environment unfavourable to the pro-Beijing camp.^{[14]: 212 [15]} In 2003, the camp faced its worst electoral defeat after the Hong Kong government tabled a controversial national security bill, overall unpopularity of the Tung Chee-hwa government and during economic malaise caused by the SARS epidemic.

In June 2004, she joined the DAB as the party sought wider support beyond its working-class base.^{[14]: 212–215} Along with Horace Cheung, Gary Chan, and Ben Chan, Lee was considered part of the party's "second-tier" members of mostly younger professionals.^[10]: 232

After Tsang resigned as party leader for the DAB's poor performance at the election, he recruited Lee to join his candidate list for the 2004 Legislative Council election to target young, professional and female voters.^{[16][17]: 205–209 [10]: 233} She was listed third on a ticket of three candidates^[18]: 120 and helped Tsang to win a seat in Kowloon West. By 2005, the party had targeted Lee for training, with Tsang as her mentor.^{[19]: 181 [20]}

In the 2008 Legislative Council election, Tsang switched his constituency to Hong Kong Island, allowing Lee to stand for the vacant seat he left in Kowloon West. Her campaign was run by Kan Chi-ho, who was also Tsang's campaign manager. Kan took Lee to meet community leaders to seek their support.^{[14]: 215–216} She was ranked first on the candidate list, before Chung Kong-mo, Chan Wai-ming, and Vincent Cheng.^[21]: 113

Lee's list received 39,013 votes (18.9%), the most in the constituency,^[21]: 113 allowing her to join the Legislative Council. As a new legislator, she was unfamiliar with many public policy issues and found it difficult understand them in a short period of time.^[14]: 216

In 2011, she was elected vice-chairwoman of the party.

In 2012, she was appointed to the Executive Council by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. At the time, she was the only person to hold positions in three different levels of representative councils, the Executive, Legislative and District Councils. She served on the Executive Council until her resignation in March 2016 to focus on her work on the Legislative Council and the party. Her position was taken by Ip Kwok-him, a long-time DAB legislator.^[22]

In the 2012 Legislative Council election, Lee left Kowloon West to contest one of five seats in the new District Council (Second) functional constituency that is elected by all voters in Hong Kong. Her ticket received over 270,000 votes in total.

On 17 April 2015, she replaced Tam Yiu-chung as the leader of the DAB in an uncontested contest, making her the first woman to hold the post.^[23] She was the youngest leader of the party at age 41; the transition was described as a generational shift.^[15][24][25] DAB legislator Leung Che-cheung commented that Lee was qualified but inexperienced to assert authority, unlike veteran politicians such as Tam or Ip Kwok-him.^[15] Lee said that the party did not operate by personal authority but consultation and discussion.^[26]

On becoming leader, Lee said she aimed to take more seats in the 2015 District Council elections by focusing on voters who were against the 2014 Hong Kong protests, and to continue to support universal suffrage in Chief Executive elections from 2017.^[23]

In March 2016, she resigned from the Executive Council to focus on the DAB.^[27]

After Lee was re-elected in the 2016 election, she succeeded Andrew Leung of the Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong (BPA) as the House Committee chairperson, the second-highest office in the Legislative Council.

On 18 May 2020, Lee was re-elected as House Committee chairperson. Prior to the vote, Chan Kin-por, the nominee of Legislative Council president Andrew Leung, had taken the seat of the presiding member – a position which had been held since October 2019 by pro-democrat Dennis Kwok – with the help of security personnel, and 15 pro-democratic lawmakers had been removed from the meeting room after scuffles had broken out; during Lee's election, three pro-democrats sat outside the room in protest. After the physical removal of the pro-democratic lawmakers, Lee was elected.^[28][29]

In March 2021, Lee supported changes that would reduce the power of Legislative Council members, claiming that opposition members had blocked legislation and caused a power vacuum.^[30]

In October 2021, Lee and fellow lawmaker Holden Chow were criticized by the mother of Amber Poon, claiming that Lee and Chow were "vanishing" after holding a press conference in 2019 with her, to push forward the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill.^[31]

During the 2021 Hong Kong legislative election, Lee dismissed concerns that the record-low voter turnout of 30.2% was problematic.^[32]

In December 2021, Lee was re-elected through Kowloon Central constituency with 95,976 votes.^[33]

In January 2022, Lee, Andrew Leung and Ma Fung-kwok pushed for the Chinese national emblem to be permanently added to the Legislative Council chamber.^[34] Leung had earlier said it would be only temporary for the swearing in of lawmakers.^[34]

In August, Lee announced that 16 members of the DAB would travel overseas to clarify any "misunderstandings" businesspeople may have about Hong Kong.^[35]

In November, after a rugby match in South Korea played Glory to Hong Kong for the Hong Kong team, Lee said that Asia Rugby should apologise to "the entire [Chinese] population."^[36]

In September 2025, Andrew Leung announced his intention not to seek re-election as the President of the Legislative Council after the end of the 7th legislative session.^[37] In the legislative election in December, Lee was re-elected through Kowloon Central with 53,529 votes (41.2%), a plurality in the constituency.^[38]

On 2 January 2026, 10 Legislative Council members nominated Lee to run for President of the Legislative Council. Colleagues who supported her included Liberal Party Chairman Peter Shiu, priest Peter Douglas Koon, businessman Andrew Lam Siu-lo, and DAB members Ben Chan and Jody Kwok.^[39] In the chamber before the vote, Lee said once elected she would no longer take part in meetings or decision-making of the DAB parliamentary group. She also promised "on principle" to abstain from voting on resolutions or expressing her opinion on policy issues. On policy, she said the council should accommodate the national 15th Five-Year Plan and cooperate with the Hong Kong executive branch under an "executive-led" system^[40] — a system of governance that favours a strong executive of career officials loyal to Beijing with weaker power and checks and balances from the legislative branch.^{[41]: 44–45} Lee narrowly defeated Chan Chun-ying, the pro-Beijing legislator for the finance sector, with 47 against Chan's 42.^[42]

In 2018, she was invited to sit on the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).^[43]

In February 2022, Lee did not attend the 2022 Two Sessions as a Hong Kong delegate.^[44]

In March 2023, Lee was elected to the National People's Congress and succeeded Tam Yiu-chung as Hong Kong's delegate to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC).^[45]

In August, she announced that she would not seek re-election as DAB chair because of "limited time and work capability".^[46] Gary Chan succeeded her as party leader a month later.^[47]

Lee has a daughter with her husband, who works in the logistics industry.^[50]

• District Council (Second)