When Professor Chan Heng Chee was named the first Woman of the Year in 1991, she had just turned 50. She had spent three decades collecting “firsts” in fields dominated by men. A profile at the time presented her as a woman whose reputation for cool logic hid a warmer, funnier and more absent-minded person.
She had returned to Singapore that year to set up the Singapore International Foundation. Its aim was to build links with Singaporeans living abroad and to give citizens a more international outlook.
A career of firsts
The profile counted off her milestones. She was the first woman political science lecturer at the National University of Singapore and the first woman to head its political science department, in 1985. In 1988 she became the first director of the Institute of Policy Studies, the government think-tank. She then served as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1989 to 1991, and was concurrently High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico.
Her academic record backed this up. She took First Class Honours in political science in 1964, then a Master’s at Cornell University in 1967 and a doctorate in 1974. Her thesis on Singapore’s struggles after separation was published by Oxford University Press, which she saw as recognition at international level.
She had also written three books and edited two. She won the National Book Award for non-fiction twice, for her study of one-party dominance and the People’s Action Party at the grassroots, and for a political biography of David Marshall.
A long-time friend who nominated her said she could think of no one with comparable achievements. Chan herself said she had never set goals. As a student she had wanted to be a librarian, because librarians were then the only women sent abroad. She described planning as “plain worrying”.
The dragon lady question
Her reputation was formidable. Critics called her sharp-tongued, and some predicted she would make more enemies than friends at the UN. In the university department she headed, some colleagues nicknamed her a dragon lady.
She saw it differently, saying her debating style was mild and that Singaporeans found criticism hard to accept. In a man’s world, she argued, a woman was either a Margaret Thatcher or a pushover. Being labelled the former simply meant she was doing her job.
She also admitted that leading in a male setting was hard. Male colleagues, she thought, judged her more harshly when she decided on promotions than they would have judged a man. At the UN, which she called very much a men’s club, she often found herself seated with the ambassadors’ wives. She laughed about the diplomat who flustered himself into calling her “Your Highness”.
She had one UN success in 1989, when she led Singapore’s lobbying for an ASEAN-backed resolution on Cambodia. Her efforts were credited with lifting support to 124 votes. She also worked to get Professor Tommy Koh elected chairman of the preparatory committee for the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil.
The person behind the reputation
Friends described someone lively and quick to laugh, including at dirty jokes. Colleagues at the foundation said she never pulled rank, welcomed differing views and liked to lunch with her staff. She said she needed only a few close friends, but that she was there for them when no one else was.
She worked on a strict routine and was a night person, often working until 3am. Outside work she walked in the parks in the early morning. At home she liked to sit in her garden at dusk with a cup of tea, feeding her carp and the visiting birds.
She had a gentler side too. Friends said she was a poor driver who sometimes could not remember where she had parked, and who would lose track of a favourite coffee place. She also wondered why Singapore’s gardens and buildings felt so rigid, which she put down to a national character that prized the correct and the precise.
Her given name, chosen by her paternal grandmother, means “celebrated pearl”. As a child she would go round the Joo Chiat neighbourhood finding neighbours to play mahjong with her grandmother.
She said she planned to keep working for as long as she could. Her one fear, she said then, was losing her eyesight.
Where she is now
She did keep working. She was Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States from 1996 to 2012, the first woman ambassador from an East Asian country posted there, and the country’s longest-serving ambassador to the US. When she left Washington she received the inaugural Asia Society Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award, among other honours.
She has been Ambassador-at-Large with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2012. She also holds a professorship at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. In November 2019 she became Chairman of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. A biography last updated in September 2026 also lists her as a member of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights and Deputy Chairman of the Social Science Research Council.
Her honours include the Distinguished Service Order, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Public Administration Medal (Gold), as well as honorary degrees from the universities of Newcastle in Australia, Buckingham and Warwick.