Explainer | Living with lupus: Hong Kong make-up artist with the incurable autoimmune disease on empowering fellow sufferers

Sapphire Shen, who has lupus, co-founded My Lupus Diary to support others with the disease and raise awareness of it, including through a recent fashion show

A Hong Kong doctor explains why the chronic autoimmune disease – which can be life-threatening – is so difficult to diagnose, and current treatments

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Sapphire Shen, who has lupus, is a co-founder of My Lupus Diary, set up to help people live with the disease and to raise awareness of it through events such as the recent Lupus Empowerment Fashion Show in Central, Hong Kong (above). Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 4:15am, 15 May 2024

Charismatic make-up artist Sapphire Shen is passionate about her career. The 31-year-old Hong Kong resident describes her work as an art form that can enhance a person’s facial features to accentuate an outfit and look – and boost their self-confidence.

On her website, My Lupus Diary, she also credits make-up with saving her life.

For more than a decade, Shen has lived with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that mostly affects women, and afflicts an estimated 7,000 people in Hong Kong and 5 million worldwide.

For the first 10 months, doctors misdiagnosed her as having other diseases with similar symptoms. Shen was “kind of happy” when she finally had her official lupus diagnosis.

“I know it sounds weird,” she admits, but having been dragged down for so long without knowing why was difficult.

“Something was obviously very wrong with me, but there was no treatment.”

Sapphire Shen (front) organised the Lupus Empowerment Fashion Show with her group My Lupus Diary in Central, Hong Kong, to raise awareness of the disease. Photo: Xiaomei Chen