Born in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), West Java, Lie received his formal education in missionary schools and by the 1870s was fluent in Sundanese, vernacular Malay, and Dutch, though he was unable to understand Chinese.

Over the following two years Lie published numerous books, including Tjhit Liap Seng, considered the first Chinese Malay novel.

After selling his printing press in 1887, the writer spent three years working in various lines of employment until he found stability in 1890 at a rice mill operated by a friend.

Lie published two books in the 1890s and, in 1900, became a founding member of the Chinese organisation Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan, which he left in 1904.

The well-to-do peranakan Chinese[a] couple was living in Cianjur at the time but went to Buitenzorg, Lie Hian Tjouw's hometown, for the birth as they had family there.

The family soon returned to Cianjur, where Lie Kim Hok was homeschooled in Chinese tradition and the local Sundanese culture and language.

For three years, in which the youth studied under three different headmasters, he was made to repeat traditional Hokkien phrases and copy Chinese characters without understanding them.

[10] The two later worked together at van der Linden's school and publishing house and shared an interest in traditional theatre, including wayang (puppets).

[11] By the age of twenty Lie had a good command of Sundanese and Malay; he also spoke fair Dutch, a rarity for ethnic Chinese at the time.

He therefore sold his school to Oey Kim Hoat and left his position at Zending Press to take a job as a land surveyor.

The former was a study book to help students learn to write Malay, while the latter was a collection of stories for children that Aprinus Salam of Gadjah Mada University credits as the first work of popular literature in the Indies.

[19] The other was the four-volume syair (a traditional Malay form of poetry) Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari; this book, dealing with a gender-disguised warrior who conquers the Sultanate of Hindustan to save her husband, became one of Lie's best-known works.

[20] After van der Linden's death in 1885, Lie paid his teacher's widow a total of 1,000 gulden to acquire the Zending Press; the funds were, in part, borrowed from his friends.

He devoted most of his time to the publishing house, and it grew quickly, printing works by other authors and reprinting some of Lie's earlier writings.

[24] The following year Lie purchased publishing rights to the Malay-language newspaper Pembrita Betawi, based in Batavia and edited by W. Meulenhoff, for 1,000 gulden.

[29] Lie did not work as a publisher again, although he continued to contribute writings to various newspapers, including Meulenhoff's new publication Hindia Olanda.

[30] In 1890 Lie began working at a rice mill operated by his friend Tan Wie Siong as a supervisor; this would be his main source of income for the remainder of his life.

[34] With nineteen other ethnic Chinese, including his former schoolmate Phoa Keng Hek, Lie was an establishing member of the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan (THHK) school system and social organisation in 1900.

In the following years he translated several books featuring Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail's fictional adventurer Rocambole, beginning with Kawanan Pendjahat in 1910.

[41] From a linguist's perspective, Kasijanto Sastrodinomo of the University of Indonesia describes Malajoe Batawi as "extraordinary",[e] noting that the first Malay-language textbook was written by a non-Malay.

[43] In his doctoral dissertation, Benitez suggests that Lie may have hoped for bazaar Malay to become a lingua franca in the Dutch East Indies.

[44] In his history of Chinese Malay literature, Nio Joe Lan finds that Lie, influenced by his missionary education, tried to maintain an orderly use of language in a period where such attention to grammar was uncommon.

[50] Several of Lie's books, including Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari, Kitab Edja, Orang Prampoewan, and Sobat Anak-anak, had multiple printings, though Tio does not record any after the 1920s.

[26] In 2000 Kitab Edja was reprinted in the inaugural volume of Kesastraan Melayu Tionghoa dan Kebangsaan Indonesia, an anthology of Chinese Malay literature.

[52] In 1922 the Sukabumi branch of the Shiong Tih Hui published another stage adaptation under the title Pembalesan Siti Akbari, which was being performed by the theatre troupe Miss Riboet's Orion by 1926.

[55] Tio, writing in 1958, found that the younger generation were not learning about Lie and his works,[56] and four years later Nio wrote that bazaar Malay had "made its way to the museums".

[58] Writing for the Chinese-owned newspaper Lay Po in 1923, Tio revealed that Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari had been heavily influenced by the 1847 poem Sjair Abdoel Moeloek, credited variously to Raja Ali Haji or his sister Saleha.

[59] In his 1958 biography, Tio revealed that Lie's Tjhit Liap Seng was an amalgamation of two European novels: Jacob van Lennep's Klaasje Zevenster (1865) and Jules Verne's Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine (1879).

Tio noted that in translating Kapitein Flamberge, Lie had changed the ending: the main character no longer died in an explosion of dynamite, but survived to marry his love interest, Hermine de Morlay.

However, she found that Lie also added, subtracted, and modified contents; she noted his more sparse approach to description and the introduction of a new character, Thio Tian, who had lived in Java.