Her father, Qian Zhuangfei, was a famed secret agent and member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Li Lili, Wang Renmei, Xue Lingxian (薛玲仙) and Hu Jia (胡笳) were known as Bright Moon's "Four Divas" (四大天王).

She starred in Sun Yu's 1932 Loving Blood of the Volcano, set in the South Seas with plenty of dancing, which allowed Li to play to her strengths.

[14] Li Lili, together with Wang Renmei and Xu Lai, her former colleagues at the Bright Moon Troupe, were the earliest stars to portray the energetic, wholesome, and sexy "country girl" prototype, which became one of the most popular figures in Chinese cinema, and later inherited by the cinema of Hong Kong.

In 1939, she filmed Cai Chusheng's Orphan Island Paradise in Hong Kong; it was another hit.

[8] During the Cultural Revolution, Li and her husband were denounced and tortured on the orders of Mao's wife Jiang Qing.

[2] By the end of her life, Li Lili was the last living Chinese movie star from the silent era.