Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was born on October 7, 1896 in Guangzhou during the Qing dynasty of China.
Her father was Lee To or Lee Towe, a minister who emigrated to the United States and worked in the American Baptist Home Mission Society.
He first served as a missionary to the Chinese community in Washington state in 1898 and then was appointed to minister at the Morning Star Mission in New York City, where he became a leading member in New York's Chinatown.
Her mother's name is recorded in US census documents alternately as Lennick or Libreck Lee.

Lee spent her early childhood in China, attending a missionary school where she learned English.
She was raised by her mother and grandmother while her father was in America.
It has been reported she traveled with her mother to America in the summer of 1900 when she was four years old to reunite with her father.
However, most articles, including a 1912 New-York Tribune article, made mention that she settled with her family in New York by 1905.
She was also an only child but the same New-York Tribune article writes of a baby sister.
Her family lived in a tenement at 53 Bayard Street in Chinatown.
She attended New York City's public schools, specifically Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, which was a school meant to accommodate the increase in immigrant children.
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was born on October 7, 1896 in Guangzhou during the Qing dynasty of China. Her father was Lee To or Lee Towe, a minister who emigrated to the United States and worked in the American Baptist Home Mission Society. He first served as a missionary to the Chinese community in Washington state in 1898 and then was appointed to minister at the Morning Star Mission in New York City, where he became a leading member in New York's Chinatown. Her mother's name is recorded in US census documents alternately as Lennick or Libreck Lee.
Lee spent her early childhood in China, attending a missionary school where she learned English. She was raised by her mother and grandmother while her father was in America. It has been reported she traveled with her mother to America in the summer of 1900 when she was four years old to reunite with her father. However, most articles, including a 1912 New-York Tribune article, made mention that she settled with her family in New York by 1905. She was also an only child but the same New-York Tribune article writes of a baby sister. Her family lived in a tenement at 53 Bayard Street in Chinatown. She attended New York City's public schools, specifically Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, which was a school meant to accommodate the increase in immigrant children.
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee