Lee Shin Cheng

Lee grew up northeast of Kuala Lumpur on a rubber plantation, where his father ran a small Chinese food shop. He left school at the age of 11 to help support his family, selling ice cream on a bicycle for four years before returning to finish high school. At the age of 22, he sought work with the Dunlop Estate—a European-owned oil palm plantation company—for a supervisory job, but was turned down as he did not speak English fluently. He went on to get a field supervisor's job with at another palm oil company.

Twenty years later, Lee bought Dunlop Estate. In 2008, he recalled the happiest day of his life in an interview with the New Straits Times, saying, "My happiest day was in 1989 when I bought Dunlop Estate from Multi-Purpose Holdings Bhd. This was because during the late 1960s, I had applied for a job at Dunlop Estate but they did not employ me because I was not adequately qualified. If they had employed me, I would probably not have owned the entire asset of Dunlop Estate today. This purchase marked a significant milestone in my life".

Lee has two sons and four daughters. All were trained as lawyers. Lee and his family's control of IOI is held via Progressive Holdings Sdn Bhd. Although all six of Lee's children work in the company holding managerial positions, sons Dato' Lee Yeow Chor and Lee Yeow Seng are more prominent by virtue of their presence on IOI's board of directors.

His youngest son Lee Yeow Seng married Yeo Bee Yin, the Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change on 11 March 2019.