Florence Lim was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where her grandfather, an immigrant from Xinhui (now part of Jiangmen), Guangdong, China,[1] owned a rice shop.

[2] Lim Cho-cho's acting career started in Hong Kong when she played the lead role in Rouge (1925), the first film produced by her husband's China Sun Motion Picture Company.

In 1926, China Sun relocated to Shanghai, and there Lim continued to star in silent films such as A Poet from the Sea (1927) and Romance of the Western Chamber (1927).

In 1931, she also acted in the Indian film Kamar-Al-Zaman, an adaptation of a tale from the Arabian Nights directed by Shah G. Agha, where she appeared in the role of princess Budur.

Following Japan's invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, the family escaped to mainland China, first to Chikan, Kaiping, Guangdong, where at one point Lim had to peddle old clothes on the street to make ends meet.