She received her B.A. from Shaanxi Normal University in 1986 and then taught Chinese as a second language at Xi'an International Studies University. She has been teaching Chinese as a second language at Tsinghua University since 1993. In 2011, she received a Master’s degree from Tsinghua University. Lu Li also taught at Samsung Electronics Co. in South Korea for six months in 1998, for an academic year at the College of William and Mary in USA in 2003 and for six months at Ferris University in Japan in 2013. She has taught primary and advanced speaking, listening and comprehensive Chinese language courses to both beginners and graduate students. Lu Li has published four textbooks on Chinese as a second language and two books on Chinese language teaching in collaboration with colleagues. Three of these six books have been classified as "outstanding" by Tsinghua University in 2012.