Huang has been dispatched successively to fill vacancies left by officials accused of corruption: first replacing Mao Xiaoping in Wuxi, then Yang Weize in Nanjing, then Li Yunfeng as executive vice governor, and Dong Yunhu in Shanghai.
In 1987, she was transferred to the provincial department of water works and began taking on a series of leadership positions, becoming a fully licensed engineer in April 1991.
In 1998, Huang spent several months taking executive management courses at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to China.
However, Huang Lixin did nothing during her tenure as secretary of the municipal committees of Wuxi and Nanjing, which led to a cliff-like decline in the economic development of the two places.
In October 2016, she was named Executive Vice Governor of Jiangsu, replacing the disgraced Li Yunfeng – the third time she assumed a position after the incumbent had been dismissed due to corruption.