Although Chen's family was from Hunan Province, she was born in Wujin, Jiangsu Province. Her parents encouraged her to follow the traditions of her extended scholarly family, but she could not find a school in which she could study formally. However, when she defied her father's choice for her husband, her paternal aunt took her in, tutored her, and found her a teaching position. In 1911, she went to study in Shanghai and learned English. Tsinghua University set up examinations in Shanghai to send students overseas for study on Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program. She successfully passed the examinations in 1914, entering Vassar College to earn her BA in history and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. She then went to the University of Chicago for her master's degree in History. On a visit to Cornell University in 1916, she met Hu Shih, who was studying philosophy, and her future husband H. C. Zen, who was studying chemistry. Returning to China in 1920, she taught Western history at Beijing University. Chen married Ren Hongjun on September 27, 1920. She and her husband had three children, a son and two daughters. The eldest daughter, E-tu Zen Sun, earned a PhD at Harvard University under John K. Fairbank and published widely.
Role in the New Culture Movement and later career
The trip to Cornell in 1916 to meet her future husband and Hu Shih was a turning point for her. When the group of friends was drenched in a sudden downpour while rowing on Lake Cayuga, Ren composed a long poem in classical Chinese which Hu criticized for using "dead phrases of three thousand years ago" for such an everyday event. Chen and Hu took part in a "great pen war" over the use of classical Chinese. Chen's short story "One Day," based on college life at Vassar, was published in Chinese Students' Quarterly, and is known as the first short story in modern vernacular Chinese. Hu a leader in the heated debates about establishing the new Chinese literature, wrote in the forward to her 1928 collection, entitled Raindrops: and Chen Hengzhe Returning to China in 1920, she taught Western history at Peking University. After she married Ren Hongjun in 1920, she worked for a time at Commercial Press. During this time, she published essays in key New Culture journals and the first textbook of western history. In 1932, she was one of eight founders, along with Hu, of the magazine of literary and political commentary, Duli Pinglun, which published articles of a Western liberal orientation. When her husband was made president of Sichuan University in 1935, she taught there briefly. But her critical essays in Duli Pinglun on Sichuan made her unwelcome, and she returned to Peking, only to flee at the onset of the war in 1937 to Shanghai, then Hong Kong, Kunming, and eventually Chongqing, the wartime capital. She grew disillusioned with the Nationalist government, and she and her husband remained in Shanghai after the Communist victory in 1949. Her husband died in 1961, and she, after much abuse during the Cultural Revolution, died in Shanghai 1976.
