Lee Li-Hua (李麗華, 1951, born in Taipei) was one of the early Taiwanese designers who went to Germany to study industrial design. In the public sources currently available,1 details about her early life, her studies in Germany, and her career after returning to Taiwan mainly appear in an interview-style company profile. Her later career remained closely connected to industrial design, product design, and applied product development in Taiwan.
After completing her university studies in Taiwan in 1972, she worked for several years as a graphic designer. With a strong interest in German industrial design, she later took part in a Taiwan government-organized examination or selection process for study in Germany and went to Germany in 1976. Taiwanese design history sources note that, among the early Taiwanese designers who went to Germany to study industrial design, there were not only recipients of CDG (Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft) scholarships but also self-funded students, including Lee Li-Hua.2 In 1976, she entered the industrial design program at the HFBK Hamburg.
The period in which Lee Li-Hua studied in Germany was also a time when industrial design in Taiwan was gradually becoming more organized and more internationally connected.3 In the 1970s, a number of Taiwanese design educators, designers, and people connected with public institutions went to Japan, Germany, and other countries to receive training in industrial design. After returning to Taiwan, many of them contributed to design education, design promotion, product development, and design consulting.4
Lee Li-Hua belongs to this early group of Taiwanese designers trained in Germany. During her time at HFBK Hamburg, the industrial design program was taught by Prof. Lambert Rosenbusch. Since she did not initially have enough credits in industrial design, she began by taking undergraduate-level courses, including metalsmithing, fabric design, furniture design, and ceramic design. In 1982, she passed her examination and received a master’s degree in product design. In the same year, her future husband Ting Hsieh (謝鼎信) received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States. Hsieh then returned to Taiwan around 1983 and founded Ting Design (鼎鼐設計企業有限公司). After graduating in 1982, Lee Li-Hua also returned to Taiwan and first worked as a product design manager at a consulting company. In 1984, she met Ting Hsieh at a design event, and soon after joined Ting Design to work with him. Taiwanese company records show that Ting Design was founded in 1984, with Ting Hsieh listed as its representative, while Lee Li-Hua was registered as the company’s manager in 1985.5 The company’s work included industrial design, product design, packaging design, furniture design, exhibition design, and model making. It can therefore be understood as one of Taiwan’s earlier professional product and industrial design studios of the 1980s.
Around 1994, Lee Li-Hua and her husband Ting Hsieh / 謝鼎信 co-founded Xetin Co., Ltd. (麗鼎開發有限公司).6 The company focuses on the research, manufacturing, and sales of ozone generators, also called 森氧機 in Chinese. Its work is related to environmental treatment, sterilization, deodorization, water treatment, air treatment, and the development of related equipment. Since its founding around 1994, Xetin has continued to operate for more than thirty years.7