[2] Ken Lee was born in Yantai, Shandong,[3] a poor rural area in China.
[2] In 1938, when Ken Lee was just seven, his father Bing left Yantai, putting him in charge of the family while he sailed to Australia seeking his fortune.
When the Japanese invaded China there was widespread famine, and Ken was selling second-hand clothes and other goods on the streets to help feed his mother and sister.
[5] He and his father built the Bing Lee chain from its first store into a multimillion-dollar retail business.
[2] Ken Lee died on 21 December 2007, at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, aged 75, from cancer.