Lei Jieqiong was born 12 September 1905[2] in Guangzhou during the late Qing dynasty, with her ancestral home in Taishan, Guangdong.

[3] Her grandfather went to the United States during the California Gold Rush and became a prosperous businessman, but left his third son Lei Zichang (1875–1926) in Guangdong to receive a traditional Chinese education.

As Japan invaded Manchuria and encroached upon North China, Lei and her students joined the December 9th Movement to demand that the Nationalist Government resist Japanese aggression.

[4] After the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937, the Japanese occupied Beijing and launched a full-scale war to invade China.

She also taught at a women's training class at the Jiangxi Political Movement Institute, one of whose two deans was Chiang Ching-kuo, the future President of the Republic of China.

When Nanchang fell to the Japanese in 1939, she moved to Ji'an in southern Jiangxi, where she became a friend of the Communist leader Zhou Enlai.

During the Sino-Japanese War, she wrote many essays based on her studies of women's lives, careers, and struggles in wartime.

[4] After the Cultural Revolution, Lei served as a law professor at Peking University and was appointed Vice-Mayor of Beijing (1977–1983).