Born in Guangbian Village, Yongning Town, Shishi, Fujian Province, Li graduated from Quanzhou First High School in 1954, and entered Fudan University to study chemistry. She started her research career at Shanghai Institute of Metallurgy of CAS—now Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology—in 1958. From August 1980 to October 1982, Li was a visiting scholar at department of electronic engineering of Carnegie-Mellon University in the United States. During her stay in the States, she visited Bell Labs and met with Alfred Y. Cho, the "father of molecular beam epitaxy".
