Li was born in Shanghai, and was chosen into the Chinese national table tennis team in 1960. At the 1965 World Table Tennis Championships in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, she was a member of the Chinese teams (together with Lin Huiqing, Zheng Minzhi, and Liang Lizhen; coach Rong Guotuan) that defeated Japan to win the women's team championship for the first time in the history of Chinese table tennis.