Hong Kong Real Estate Billionaire Lee Shau Kee, Once Asia’s Richest Person, Dies At 97

Lee Shau Kee, founder of Henderson Land Development, passed away on March 17, 2025.

Paul Yeung/Bloomberg

Lee Shau Kee, the self-made billionaire who built one of Hong Kong’s largest property empires, died on Monday. He was 97.

Lee’s company, Henderson Land Development, announced he passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family. Lee founded Henderson Land in 1976 and was the chairman until 2019, when he handed the reins to his sons Peter and Martin, making them co-chairmen.

At the time of his death, Lee was the second-wealthiest person in Hong Kong with a net worth of $30 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list.

Lee was among the first generation of entrepreneurs in Hong Kong who started making a fortune from property development between the 60s and 70s, when the city was facing a shortage of affordable housing. During the period, Lee cofounded Sun Hung Kai Properties with Fung King Hey and Kwok Tak Seng, the father of Hong Kong’s billionaire Kwok brothers, and later went out on his own to establish Henderson Land. Both Sun Hung Kai and Henderson Land became major players in Hong Kong’s real estate market.

Lee’s own property venture was known for building mass residential homes and amassing land banks. Henderson Land led the development of Hong Kong’s northern reclaimed town of Sha Tin in the 1970s, which grew into the city’s most populated district with roughly 700,000 residents. The company today is the largest owner of undeveloped rural land in Hong Kong’s northern New Territories region, with a reserve spanning about 45 million square feet.

Henderson Land also helped shape Hong Kong’s skyline, developing the iconic International Finance Centre (IFC) in the Central business district in a joint venture that includes Sun Hung Kai. Henderson Land’s portfolio also comprises the city’s most expensive commercial land, which Henderson Land acquired for $6.5 billion in 2021 to develop new office and retail complexes right next to the IFC. The record-breaking bid came less than five years after Henderson Land paid $3 billion for a site of a former multi-story car park on Murray Road in Central. The developer has since turned it into a landmark Grade A office tower, named the Henderson, which opened last year, with tenants including auction house Christie’s and private equity giant Carlyle.

The success of Henderson Land catapulted Lee to become Asia’s richest person in 1996, with a net worth Forbes estimated at $12.7 billion. That year, he was also named the world’s fourth wealthiest person, ranking only after Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Roche’s Paul Sacher.

In 1997, when Lee topped the Asia wealth rankings again, he shared how he had amassed his wealth in an interview for his biography. “Wealth is accumulated through diligence and frugality,” he said. “People say ‘big wealth comes from heaven.’ It doesn’t mean leaving things to heaven; it means wealth will come only when the time, place and opportunity are favorable. It is not something that can be forced.”

Lee Shau Kee (center) and his elder son Peter (left) and younger son Martin (right).

Henderson Land Development

Born in 1928, Lee was known as “Uncle Four” for being the fourth born child in a merchant family from Shunde, a city in China’s Guangdong province. His father operated a gold, silver and currencies exchange business, and had Lee participate in its operation since he was 6 years old. Lee recalled in his biography that his family had lived a frugal life, eating meat or fish only twice a month.

At the age of 20, Lee went to Hong Kong with HK$1,000 ($128) he earned while working in the family business. In the then-British colony, Lee started out trading precious metals and currencies. Recognizing that Hong Kong would face a chronic housing shortage, he ventured into real estate and in 1963 cofounded Sun Hung Kai with Fung and Kwok. The trio were dubbed the “Three Musketeers.”

After Sun Hung Kai went public in Hong Kong in 1972, Lee went out on his own and founded the holding company of Henderson Land a year later. Despite his departure from Sun Hung Kai, Lee continued to hold a minority stake in the company as well as the title of vice chairman.

In 1981, Lee took Henderson Land public on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Over the years, he has grown Henderson Land into an empire that also controls other listed companies in Hong Kong, including one of the city’s largest gas suppliers, Hong Kong and China Gas (also known as Towngas), as well as hospitality group Miramar Hotel and Investment and ferry service operator Hong Kong Ferry (Holdings).

Besides running Henderson Land, Lee also devoted his time to philanthropy. One of his proudest projects was leading the Hong Kong Pei Hua Education Foundation, which he co-established in 1982. Over the years, the charity organization provided education and training programs which it said had benefited nearly 1.3 million people in mainland China. Lee, through his Lee Shau Kee Foundation, also gifted more than HK$1 billion ($128 million) and 600 million yuan ($83 million) to universities in Hong Kong and mainland China, respectively.

“I’m a businessman, and I’ve always used the principle of leverage when doing business. It’s the ability to turn one dollar into two, then four and then eight,” Lee said in the interview for his biography in 1997. “For this reason, I also do my charity work in the same way, trying to help as many people as possible. That’s what I really consider success to be about.”

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