SEVERAL days ago, Zhong Huijuan wasn’t even the richest person in her family.

Now, she has become the wealthiest self-made woman in Asia with a US$10.5 billion fortune. The bulk of her wealth comes from her stake in Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group, China’s largest maker of psychotropic drugs, which soared 37 percent Friday in Hong Kong during its first day of trading.

Zhong, a former chemistry teacher who founded Hansoh in 1995, overtook Longfor Group’s chairman Wu Yajun to claim the self-made title.

Zhong is the second-richest woman in Asia, trailing only Yang Huiyan, co-chairman of Country Garden Holdings, who inherited her fortune.

Zhong’s fortune far exceeds that of Blair Parry-Okeden, whose grandfather built the Cox Enterprises media conglomerate, as well as Christy Walton, the widow of the second son of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

Zhong’s wealth has now surpassed her husband Sun Piaoyang’s separate US$9.4 billion fortune from his Shanghai-listed pharma firm Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine.

The combined net worth for the couple also makes them one of the world’s richest pharma families, rivaling the Sacklers, who made their money by selling opioids, and the Bertarellis of Switzerland, who are worth US$16.3 billion.

Zhong said in the Lianyungang, Jiangsu-based company’s listing ceremony that government support plays an important role in the drugmaker’s success.

Health care spending in China has surged to 5.9 trillion yuan (US$852 billion) last year from 3.5 trillion yuan in 2014, and is projected to top 9.4 trillion yuan in 2023, Hansoh said in a prospectus for the offering.

The firm researches and produces drugs in areas such as oncology, cardiovascular and diabetes, according to the filing, and gets almost half of its revenue come from cancer treatments.

Zhong graduated with an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Jiangsu Normal University in July 1982 and taught chemistry at the Yan’an Middle School in Lianyungang in the early 1990s. (SD-Agencies)