Lim was born on 6 June 1961 in Muar in the Federation of Malaya, the eldest of eight siblings in a Malayan Chinese family. He lived for 15 years in a house with almost no electricity, no floor, and a leaking roof. His childhood dream was to be a policeman, so he became a constable in the Royal Malaysia Police in the 1980s after completing his Malaysian Certificate Examination. However, the low pay rates and weak state of the Malaysian ringgit meant that he could not share his income with his parents. Instead, after two years with the police, he worked as a dolphin trainer at a safari park in Johor for five years, a job that Lim described as his "best job ever". The safari park closed down later, and Lim moved into small business.
