She gained critical acclaim for her role in Seventeen Years (1999) and received widespread success with films such as A World Without Thieves (2004), The Knot (2006), The Forbidden Kingdom (2008), The Message (2009), and Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010).

[8] Li gained critical acclaim for her role in Zhang Yuan's Seventeen Years (1999), for which she and Liu Lin shared the Best Actress Award at the 13th Singapore International Film Festival.

In 2004, Li achieved breakthrough with her performance in Feng Xiaogang's A World Without Thieves, for which she received a nomination of Best Supporting Actress at the Hundred Flowers Awards.

[13] She, along with other partners including Li Xue, established a studio Hesong Entertainment in the same year, co-starring and co-producing the film 1911 with Jackie Chan, which was released in September 2011 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution.

[14] Li Bingbing's first time in an English-language film is Wayne Wang's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, adapted from Lisa See's 2005 novel of the same title.

[24] The same year, it was announced that Li would play China's first female superhero in upcoming film Realm, written by Stan Lee.

She is also one of the founders of the two-year One Million-Tree Forest project, launched in efforts to change the climate environment and help local residents of Gansu Province, Southwest China, to increase their incomes.