Lisa Ho was born in Albury, New South Wales, in 1960, of Chinese and English descent. She began sewing at four, inspired by her grandmother, a tailor, and by ten had a sewing machine at the end of the kitchen table, which she used daily to make clothes for herself and her four sisters, cutting patterns from newspaper.
After Pennant Hills High School she trained in fashion design at East Sydney Technical College, graduating in 1981. She spent a year working for three other companies before deciding to work for herself. In 1982, fresh from college, she took a stall at the Paddington markets; within six weeks her designs had drawn the attention of retailers and the press, and the Lisa Ho label was born.
Over three decades it became one of Australia's best-known fashion names, with a following for its feminine, occasion-ready dressing. Her clothes were worn by Delta Goodrem, Elle Macpherson, Olivia Newton-John, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Lopez, among others.
Her international profile rose with the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, when the opening ceremony included a segment she designed celebrating Australian fashion; she also designed the gown Olivia Newton-John wore to welcome the athletes.
Her evening wear became a fixture of the new Australian red carpet. When the actor Sarah Wynter wore a beaded chiffon Lisa Ho dress to the Emmy Awards in 2003, American commentators were surprised to find an Australian label where they expected Chanel or Armani. That October Delta Goodrem wore a pink beaded chiffon gown from Ho's Sydney workrooms to the ARIA Music Awards, where she won seven awards; the dress, bias cut after the 1930s and slashed and frayed at the hem, is now in the Powerhouse Museum, whose catalogue describes it as part of a wider moment of Australian fashion "coming of age". The museum also holds costumes she designed for the Asian float in the Sydney 2000 opening ceremony. Ho is a serious collector too: by 2012 her archive of vintage clothing and fabric was estimated at close to 18,000 pieces.
At its height the business employed around 80 staff across head office and twelve signature stores, and the label was carried by David Jones and sold worldwide online. In May 2013, months after announcing plans to list on the Australian Securities Exchange, the company entered administration, and that June its stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane closed.
The collapse was steep. Reports put the group's debts at about $20 million, and it closed after more than 30 years in business. Ho bought back the Lisa Ho name and her archive of historic designs from the administrator, and in March 2014 Myer announced L by Lisa Ho, a new range for the department store that reached its floors that August as part of the spring/summer season. "I'm thrilled to be joining Myer," she said. "They have continued to show their support for local Australian designers." Her evening and cocktail dresses had by then been worn by Jessica Alba as well as Jennifer Lopez.
Ho's career remains a defining Sydney story of its era: a market stall turned national label, built on a designer's lifelong fluency with the sewing machine.