Ex-factory Worker Who Dropped Out of School Named China’s Richest Woman

Zhou Qunfei was seated between Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook during a Beijing banquet for Donald Trump’s state visit in May

Full Summary

Zhou Qunfei, the founder of Lens Technology, has reclaimed her title as China’s richest woman according to the Hurun Richest Women in China 2026 list. Her journey from a teenage factory worker to a billionaire highlights the massive growth of Lens Technology as a key supplier for tech giants like Apple.

Zhou Qunfei, a 56-year-old Chinese woman who dropped out of school and once worked as a factory worker, has topped a list of the richest women in the country.

Ms Zhou is the founder of Chinese glass manufacturing giant Lens Technology. She reclaimed her position as China’s richest woman with an estimated fortune of 127bn yuan (about £14.20bn).

According to the Hurun Richest Women in China 2026 list published on 28 October, her wealth has increased 15 per cent over the past year, putting her marginally ahead of Hansoh Pharmaceutical founder Zhong Huijuan, whose fortune is estimated at 124bn yuan (approximately £13.86bn).

Ms Zhou previously held the title in 2015.

Hurun, a global research and publishing institute, has been publishing its list of the country’s richest women since 1999. It said on its website that the list is distinct from the overall China Rich List because, “unlike the main [list] which ranks families and couples together, the women’s list carves out the individual wealth of each woman that can be separated from the family’s wealth”.

Ms Zhou’s journey from factory worker to billionaire began in Hunan province, where she was born in 1970. She left school as a teenager, moved to Shenzhen and 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 became a major supplier of glass screens for smartphones

The company’s fortunes soared 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 Ms Zhou to the top of China’s women’s wealth rankings.

However, her fortune suffered when the US-China trade war and concerns about Apple’s sales contributed to a sharp fall in the company’s share price in 2018.

The company subsequently diversified beyond smartphones into electric vehicles, artificial intelligence-related hardware and robotics. It secured a second listing in Hong Kong in July 2025 to raise funds for its expansion, although it remains vulnerable to

Lens Technology is among the companies seeking opportunities in AI and robotics as the country’s high-tech manufacturing sector expands.

Ms Zhou’s prominence was reflected at a state banquet hosted by Chinese president Xi Jinping for US president Donald Trump in Beijing on 14 May, where she was seated between Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

At the 2026 Pujiang Innovation Forum, Ms Zhou said the AI era required manufacturers to focus not just on computing power and algorithms but on sustained innovation across entire systems.

According to Hurun, 65 per cent of the 50 richest women in the country were self-made, with their collective wealth reaching a record 1.93 trillion yuan (or about £216.29bn).

Ms Zhou and her husband’s collective wealth ranked them 33rd on China’s overall Hurun Rich List, which was topped by ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, with an estimated fortune of 670 billion yuan (£75bn).

Source: www.independent.co.uk