Wu Ying has come a long way since working as a beautician in her home city of Dongyang in Zhejiang province .
Ms Wu was born in a Dongyang village in 1981 to a construction sub-contractor father and a farmer mother. She has three sisters, according to media reports.
In 1997, at 16, she registered to enter a local technical school. Eighteen months later, she dropped out and studied to become a beautician under her aunt. Later, she opened a beauty parlour in the city, but left soon after.
Various rumours have circulated as to what she did next. One version has it that Ms Wu met a Southeast Asian warlord and received a small fortune for helping him smuggle goods and launder money. Ms Wu has denied the rumours, insisting she has been in Guangzhou and Zhejiang over the past few years, making her fortune from several legitimate businesses.
Her husband, Zhou Hongbo, has said most of the start-up money came from futures investments since 2003.
Last year, Ms Wu returned to her home town and raised eyebrows by setting up 15 companies and branches with an investment of nearly 300 million yuan, Dongyang Industry and Commerce Administration statistics show.