Lee was born in a wealthy and highly educated family in Taikang County, Henan in 1942. Both his father Li Yonggang (Chinese: 李永刚) and mother Zhou Yuan (Chinese: 周瑗) were musicians and educators. His given name "Ou-fan" is the Chinese version of Orpheus, the Greek god of music.
After graduating he taught at Chung Chi College of Chinese University of Hong Kong, Princeton University, Indiana University, University of Chicago, University of California, Los Angeles, Harvard University, and National Taiwan Normal University.[4][5][3]
Lee was first wed to dancer Wang Xiaolan (Chinese: 王晓蓝), the daughter of Hualing Nieh Engle and poet Paul Engle. After a turbulent divorce, he remarried in September 2000. Li Yuying (Chinese: 李玉莹), his second wife, who was the former wife of Deng Wenzheng (Chinese: 邓文正). The couple was divorced, and Lee has since remarried.[citation needed]
Selected works
Books and edited volumes
My Harvard University Years
The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1973. ISBN0674779304
Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. ISBN0253362636
Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 1999, Harvard University Press, ISBN978-0-674-80551-4
City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. 2008 ISBN978-0-674-02701-5
An Intellectual History of Modern China, Merle Goldman and Leo Ou-fan Lee, Ed, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002. ISBN0521801206
Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present. translated and edited by R. David Arkush and Leo O. Lee. Berkeley : University of California Press,1989. ISBN978-0-520-06256-6
The Lyrical and the Epic: Studies of Modern Chinese Literature, Author: Jaroslav Průšek; edited by Leo Ou-fan Lee. Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 1980. ISBN0253102839
The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China's May Fourth ProjectMilena Doleželová-Velingerová, Oldrich Kral, and Graham Sanders Ed, Harvard University Asia Center, 2002. ISBN978-0674007864
Musings: Reading Hong Kong, China and the World, Leo Lee Ou-fan, Muse Books/East Slope Publishing : Hong Kong, 2011. ISBN978-988-15005-0-2