Hired by the Greater China Film Company through a general casting call, she later transferred to Mingxing, with whom she made the commercially successful Lonely Orchid (1926) and was crowned "movie queen" in a newspaper poll.

It was later found that ten photographs, including Zhang's, had been taken by a journalist with the Shen Bao – whose mailbox the company had used – after he deemed them the most beautiful.

[3] Zhang was selected from these recovered pictures for the company's upcoming productions, and the theft of her portrait was used to generate hype.

Over the next three years she made seven films for the company, including Lonely Orchid (1926),[4] in which she portrayed the dual role of a lovelorn young woman and the servant whose death is mistaken for hers.

For her role in Pure as Ice, she gained audience recognition as a tragedy performer, with the magazine Movie Life (影戲生活; 影戏生活) comparing her to Lillian Gish.

[9] She later began dating Tang Jishan [zh], a tea merchant, leaving the film industry to spend time with him in the United States.

[3] Intended to tell her life's story, the sound film suffered because of Zhang's poor command of Mandarin – the language of dialogue – and was received negatively.