A member of the first generation of Chinese to be formally trained as architects, Lin Huiyin was China’s first female architect. Between 1924 and 1927 she studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a bachelor of arts rather than an architecture degree, as the university did not yet award those to women. Nonetheless, after graduation she worked for a summer in the office of her professor, Paul Philippe Cret. She subsequently briefly studied stage design at the School of Drama at Yale University.  In 1928 Lin H. married fellow architect and Penn alumnus Liang Sicheng; the pair toured Europe before returning to China, where they established the architecture department at Northeast University in Shenyang.  Here they began the work of identifying and arguing for the preservation of China’s architectural heritage.

In 1930 Lin H. moved to Beijing, where she and Liang S. worked for the Institute for Research in Chinese Architecture. Continuing their documentation of China’s architectural past, they toured the countryside tracking down long forgotten medieval buildings, in the process becoming the foremost historians of Chinese architecture.  This included a 1937 expedition during which they identified the Dongda Hall of Foguang Temple in Shanxi Province as dating to the Tang dynasty, which remains a landmark event in the history of scholarship on Chinese architecture. Lin H. was especially excited to find an inscription stating that the hall had been donated by a woman. During these years they also designed the Geology Building (1934–35) and Women’s Dormitory (1935) for Peking University, both executed in brick in a modern style influenced by buildings they had seen in Europe.  After war broke out with Japan, the couple moved south, first in 1937 to Kumming, where they built a modest house, and then in 1940 to Lizhuang, returning to Beijing only in 1946.

Lin H. and Liang S.’s support for the Communist government prompted them to participate in the design of a new national emblem. Their design featured the Tiananmen Gate, from which Mao had proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. In addition to being appointed a professor at Tsinghua University, Lin H. assumed a number of official positions, including as a member of the Committee of Beijing Urban Planning, a representative in Beijing’s First People’s Congress and as a member of the National Literature Assembly. She was also one of the members of the committee which, under Liang S.’s leadership, designed the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, dedicated in 1958, and took responsibility for the design of much of its base.  Despite this official recognition, she and Liang S. failed in their efforts to preserve the city’s walls and other historic monuments. Lin H. died in 1955 from the tuberculosis from which she had suffered for a quarter of a century.

In addition to her contributions as an architect, architectural historian and graphic designer, Lin H. was also a notable literary figure celebrated for her poems and short stories as well as her scholarly articles on architecture. Along with her friend, the poet Xu Zhimo, she acted as Rabindranath Tagore’s interpreter during his 1924 trip to China. She also hosted an important Beijing salon.  Her niece is the American architect Maya Lin.