Chen Yinke was born in Changsha, Hunan in 1890, and his ancestral home was Yining, Jiangxi (now Xiushui County, Jiujiang).

Yinke's father Chen Sanli was a famous poet, one of the "Four Gentlemen" of the Hundred Days' Reform.

As a boy, Chen Yinke attended a private school in Nanjing, and was once a student of Wang Bohang [zh], a sinologist.

In 1905 he was forced to return to China due to beriberi, and studied at Fudan Public School, Shanghai.

[3] He acquired a knowledge of Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu, Japanese, Sanskrit, Pali, English, French, German, Persian, Turkic, Tangut, Latin, and Greek.

In March 1925, he returned to China again, meanwhile Wu Mi was in charge of the Institute of Guoxue Studies, Tsinghua School.

He accepted the invitation to become a supervisor at Institute of Guoxue Studies, together with Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao and Zhao Yuanren.

He left for Hong Kong in September 1940 on his way to United Kingdom, but was forced to return Kunming due to ongoing battles.

Chen was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution due to his previous connection with the out-of-favor Tao Zhu.

Several times he was forced to write statements to clarify his political standings: "I have never done anything harmful to Chinese people in my life.

The bone ashes of Chen and his wife was at first stored at Yinhe Revolutionary Cemetery, but moved to Lushan Botanical Garden in 2003.

The first one was "the Institute of Mid-Ancient Chinese History be exempt from the doctrines of Marxism, as well as attending politics lectures".