In her introduction to the novel, See writes that Lily, the narrator, was born on June 5, 1824—"the fifth day of the sixth month of the third year of the Daoguang Emperor's reign".

The University of Southern California China historian Charlotte Furth wrote that Western readers think of Chinese women simply as victims and focus on such problems as footbinding and arranged marriages, but that Lisa See's historical novels "follow the best feminist scholarship on women in the Ming-Qing period by tackling these stereotypes."

In rural Hunan province called Puwei, a county in China, Lily is destined to become a laotong pair with Snow Flower, a girl of the same age from Tongkou.

'[3][4] The women also learn Nü Shu songs and stories and frequently meet at the Temple of the Gupo, where they go to pray for the birth of healthy sons, which is the "measure of a woman's worth."

She marries a butcher, culturally considered the lowest of professions, and has a miserable life filled with children dying and beatings at the hand of her husband.

Lily's need for love and her inability to forgive what she considers to be acts of betrayal cause her to inflict harm on many people, Snow Flower most of all.

The film version of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was directed by Wayne Wang and produced by Florence Sloan, Wendi Murdoch, and Hugo Shong.