Florence Fang

Business career Fang and her husband bought Chinese language media titles, before expanding into English-language titles including AsianWeek and the San Francisco Independent. In 2000, when the Hearst Corporation was facing antitrust concerns (including from Fang) over its acquisition of the San Francisco Chronicle, she acquired the San Francisco Examiner from them for $100 while also receiving a $66 million subsidy from Hearst to run the Examiner for three years, becoming the first Asian American to own a major daily newspaper in the US. In 2019, the San Francisco Chronicle described Fang as having close ties to Democrat politicians as well, including Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein, and as having been "a key player in the elections of former San Francisco Mayors Frank Jordan and Willie Brown." On the other hand, in 2000 it characterized Chinatown community activist Rose Pak, "who, until the Fangs gained ascendance with Jordan's election, had the ear of City Hall exclusively" as Florence Fang's "archenemy." From 2008 to 2013, she donated $2.5 million to finance a building of the School of Chinese as Second Language on the campus of Peking University, which was named the Florence Lee Fang Building. that promotes the goal of the PR China gaining control over Taiwan. Chinese media have reported Fang as saying that it was her aim to "prevent the spread of 'Taiwan independence' ideology"; and she called Taiwan a "fake democracy" at appearances with CCP officials. U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led the ground breaking ceremonies. FFACG sits on the land of the former Demattei farm, San Francisco's last commercial farm, which had been operating as late as 1988. It was overseen by Florence Fang's son Ted Fang. thumb

WWII Pacific War Memorial Hall Florence Fang initiated the WWII Pacific War Memorial Hall, a two-story museum inaugurated in 2015 on the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Japan that marked the end of World War II. It is located in San Francisco's Chinatown at 809 Sacramento Street, a building that formerly housed the headquarters of AsianWeek and "several different politically active Chinese American newspapers, in particular the Chung Sai Yat Po and the Chinese Nationalist Daily/Chinese Daily Post (Kuo Min Yat Po)."

The historian Denise Y. Ho described it as an example of how museums "play an important role in 'telling China's story well' for global audiences," and as "look[ing] remarkably like a Chinese museum, featuring a sculpture 'Great Wall of Blood and Flesh' that evokes the Chinese national anthem." After closing for 16 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum reopened in 2021 with a new exhibition focusing on the collaboration of the US and China against Japan during World War II, which Fang called "our [countries'] lasting memory" in a speech at the reopening ceremony. The house was built in 1976, and designed by the architect William Nicholson. It was listed at US$4.2 million in 2015, but Fang bought it for $2.8 million. Fang engaged lawyers and made counter-claims for violating her First Amendment rights, discrimination and emotional distress.

Personal life In 1960, she married John Ta Chuan Fang, Ted Fang died in 2024 of natural causes.