Lydia Dunn

Lydia Selina Dunn, Baroness Dunn, (Chinese: 鄧蓮如; born 29 February 1940) is a Hong Kong-born retired British businesswoman and politician. She became the second person of Hong Kong origin (the first was Lawrence Kadoorie, Baron Kadoorie) and the first female ethnic Chinese Hongkonger to be elevated to the peerage as a life peeress with the title and style of Baroness in 1990. Launching her career in British firms Swire Group and HSBC Group, she was an Unofficial Member and then the Senior Member of the Executive Council and Legislative Council of Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s, witnessing the major events of Hong Kong including the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. She is best known in Hong Kong for her part in (unsuccessfully) lobbying for the people of Hong Kong to have the right of abode in the United Kingdom after the Handover of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997, and she remained influential until her retirement from Hong Kong politics in 1995. From 1990 to 2010, she also served as a member of the House of Lords, the first ethnic Chinese person to assume such position. She resigned from the House of Lords in 2010 following the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 which effectively disallows "Non-Doms" from sitting in either House of the British Parliament.