FLASH
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Few would believe her incredible journey from the absolute poverty of provincial China to the pinnacle of global technology. Zhou Qunfei was born in 1970 in a small village in Hunan Province, China. She was the third child of a very poor family. Her father was seriously injured in an accident before she was born, losing part of his eyesight and a finger. Her mother died when Zhou was just five years old.
From a very young age, she decided to help her family financially with her sharp mind and dexterous hands. She learned to weave bamboo baskets and could repair her fellow villagers’ bicycles. However, at the age of sixteen, she dropped out of school and migrated to Shenzhen, the largest city in the province, to work in factories. Her early wages were meager – some sources say her salary was around a dollar a day. But Zhou did not give up. Despite working hard, she also took evening courses in accounting and electronics, skills she would need later. She also decided to stay in Shenzhen to be near the university to have access to education and left her parents’ home, a rarity in China at the time.
A life-threatening danger
At the age of 22, having saved a small capital with her hard-earned savings (about 20,000 Hong Kong dollars, an amount that would be equivalent to about 5,000 euros today), she founded her first small business – Lens Technology – a business that manufactured glass lenses for watches, from a rented apartment and with the help of her family.
She knew that if she failed, there would be no other chance to escape her misery. However, her greatest strengths were the quality of the details, her insistence on precision, and her knowledge of all stages of production (from design to final product). These became the hallmarks of her work. As the demand for glass, and especially for screens, increased with the advancement of mobile phones, she was presented with the opportunity to enter the world of touchscreens.
After almost a decade of building a strong local reputation, the opportunity that took it off the ground presented itself: it was asked to make glass for Motorola’s Razr V3, at a time when most were using plastic. That contract opened all the doors: manufacturing screens for Motorola, and then for companies like Nokia, Samsung, and others. In 2007, when the iPhone introduced glass touchscreens, Lens Technology became a supplier to Apple. This essentially helped establish it as a major player in the industry.
Over the years, Lens Technology has grown exponentially. In 2000, it had dozens of factories, employed tens of thousands of workers, and produced large quantities of glass and screens for mobile phones, watches, and other devices. In the 2010s, it began to grow rapidly, with factories opening every year. On March 18, 2015, her company was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The public offering was a huge success, with the stock hitting its highest daily level and continuing to rise for several days. This also increased her net worth, as she now owned almost 88% of her company’s shares.
Net worth in the tens of billions
Today, Zhou Qunfei is considered one of the richest women in the world who have created their own fortune – according to the latest figures, her fortune is close to 11 billion dollars. Her company supplies touch screens to Apple, Samsung, Huawei and other major technology companies. Despite the power and size of the empire she built, Zhou Qunfei did not change her behavior, remaining disciplined and modest.
Those who have met her say she has the precision of an engineer and the patience of a craftsman. She often visits her own factories, not to talk to managers, but to the production line itself, talking to workers, inspecting samples, discussing methods of improvement and encouraging everyone to give her new ideas. She has stated that she does not believe in big talk, but in capable hands. Her colleagues describe her as reserved, measured and extremely organized, but also with a quiet tenacity rarely found in the world of billionaires.
Her personal life has been discreet, as has her public image. She has been married twice and has one daughter. Her first divorce occurred in the early years of her business career, at a time when she was working almost non-stop and sleeping very little. Zheng Junlong, her second husband, was a close associate at Lens Technology and contributed to the company's growth.
Although she lives comfortably, Zhu avoids exaggeration: she will not be seen at social gatherings or in large media appearances. She prefers the quiet of family life, the daily routine and the rhythm of work. Time and again, in interviews, she repeats the same phrase: “Life does not owe you anything. You owe it effort,” a sentence that sums up her journey from factory dust to clean-tech laboratories.
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