Born in Nanhui, today a district of Shanghai, Fu was raised by his mother.

Between 1928 and 1931 he read literature and art history in Paris, befriending, amongst others, Jacques Maritain and Jean Daniélou.

An occasional critic and curator, for the most part of his working life, Fu Lei translated full-time.

Fu's life and work is the subject of the 2017 monograph, Fou Lei: An Insistence on Truth, by the Chinese-British scholar Mingyuan Hu.

It chronicles the hitherto unknown Parisian milieu and intellectual formation of Fu Lei through archival documents unearthed in France.