Exhibition Celebrating the Legacy of Educational Opportunity of the Late Dr The Honourable Lee Shau Kee GBM

Dr The Honourable Lee Shau Kee was a pioneering entrepreneur, a visionary philanthropist, and a lifelong advocate for education as a pathway to opportunity. Born in 1928 in Guangdong Province, Southern China, Dr Lee moved to Hong Kong in 1948 and went on to establish Henderson Land Development Company Limited, becoming one of the most respected business leaders in Asia.

Dr Lee’s relationship with Wadham College spanned more than five decades. In the early 1980s, he established the Lee Shau Kee Sir Man Kam Lo Fellowship in Law, in honour of a close friend. Together with Wadham alumnus, Lo Tak Shing (son of Sir Man Kam Lo), he later created the Lee Shau Kee Scholarship scheme, which allowed 3–4 Hong Kong students each year to pursue undergraduate study at Wadham. Over 100 scholars benefited from this transformative opportunity, many of them graduating with First Class Honours and going on to leadership roles in public service, law, business, and the arts.

The lead convenor of the LSK group, Victor Lee (Engineering, 1993), has been instrumental in supporting the Wadham – Hong Kong community and the relationship with the Lee family. Following Dr Lee’s passing in March 2025, the Henderson Group created a memorial exhibition in Hong Kong and Wadham is hosting a small version of this exhibition.

Emeritus Fellow in Law, Jeffrey Hackney and many other colleagues supported the Scholarship scheme. Jeffrey notes:

‘In the late 1970s, Peter Carter, Fellow of Law at Wadham College, was approached by one of his former law students, Lo Tak-Shing, who said that his friend Dr Lee Shau Kee was interested in fostering East-West understanding by facilitating a UK education for school students from Hong Kong. They wanted to explore whether Wadham would be interested in constructing a scheme. The scheme would be that Fellows of Wadham would travel to Hong Kong after the announcement of the results of the students’ final examinations were known to interview prospective candidates, thereby removing the need for them to incur the disruption and financial costs of travel to the UK for interview. Dr Lee undertook to offer financial support to successful candidates. The LSK Scholarship was a revolutionary idea, embraced by the college in 1979 when they agreed to accept three or four students a year. Two Fellows would travel to Hong Kong to form the academic core of interview panels forthe students. These panels in the early years included Dr Lee himself as well as Sir Denys Roberts, the Chief Justice of Hong Kong as well as Lo Tak-Shing (the President of the Law Society of Hong Kong). If academic results were the only criteria, these panels were a great success, and the LSK students, as they were known, consistently performed above the average level of student attainment’

Thanks to Dr Lee’s personal involvement, the Lee Shau Kee Scholarship became one of Oxford’s most extensive scholarship programmes. In 2013, the Lee Shau Kee Scholars’ Room was named in his honour by grateful alumni and in 2015, Dr Lee lead-funded the Dr Lee Shau Kee Building. This was the first purpose-built outreach centre of its kind in the UK. Dr Lee made this donation in recognition of Wadham’s extensive access programme for students from under-represented backgrounds. In 2015, Dr Lee was admitted to Oxford’s Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors.

The Wadham community was deeply saddened by Dr Lee's passing in 2025.