Ex-factory worker who left school as a teenager named China’s richest woman

A former factory worker who dropped out of school as a teenager has reclaimed her place as China’s richest woman, with an estimated fortune of 127 billion yuan (about $17.8 billion), The Independent reports.

Zhou Qunfei, 56, is the founder of Lens Technology, a major Chinese manufacturer of glass screens and covers for smartphones and other electronic devices. Her wealth rose 15% over the past year, narrowly surpassing Zhong Huijuan, founder of pharmaceutical company Hansoh Pharmaceutical, whose fortune is estimated at 124 billion yuan.

According to The Independent, the figures come from the Hurun Richest Women in China 2026 list, published on October 28. Zhou previously held the title in 2015.

Born in Hunan province in 1970, Zhou left school as a teenager and moved to Shenzhen, where she worked in a watch-glass factory earning about $1.20 a day.

At 23, she established her own glass-processing workshop, teaching herself advanced screen-printing and curved-glass manufacturing techniques. She later co-founded Lens Technology, which grew into a major supplier to the global electronics industry.

The company’s fortunes surged after it began supplying glass covers for Apple’s first iPhones in 2007. Apple accounted for nearly half of Lens Technology’s main business revenue between 2011 and the first half of 2014, according to the company’s prospectus.

Lens Technology’s stock market listing in Shenzhen in March 2015 propelled Zhou to the top of China’s women’s wealth rankings.

However, her fortune took a hit in 2018 as the US-China trade war and concerns about Apple’s sales contributed to a sharp decline in the company’s share price.

The company has since expanded beyond smartphones into electric vehicles, artificial intelligence-related hardware and robotics. It secured a second stock market listing in Hong Kong in July 2025 to raise funds for its expansion.

Despite its diversification, Lens Technology remains exposed to fluctuations in consumer electronics demand and currency movements.

Zhou’s growing prominence was on display during a state banquet hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping for US President Donald Trump in Beijing on May 14. She was seated between Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.

Speaking at the 2026 Pujiang Innovation Forum, Zhou said manufacturers in the AI era needed to focus not only on computing power and algorithms but also on sustained innovation across entire systems.

The Hurun report found that 65% of the 50 richest women in China had built their fortunes themselves. Their combined wealth reached a record 1.93 trillion yuan, or about £216.29 billion.

Zhou and her husband ranked 33rd on Hurun’s overall China Rich List, which was topped by ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, with an estimated fortune of 670 billion yuan, or about £75 billion.

Hurun, a global research and publishing institute, has compiled its ranking of China’s richest women since 1999. Unlike its main wealth ranking, which counts families and couples together, the women’s list attempts to measure each woman’s individually attributable wealth.