A lifelong entrepreneur from a wealthy family, he founded a succession of businesses catering to the affluent but also backed democracy for Hong Kong.
SHANGHAI, China — David Tang, the founder of Shanghai Tang, a global chain of flashy emporiums of Chinese-inspired clothing, accessories and home furnishings, and a prominent writer and raconteur in Hong Kong and Britain, died on Tuesday in London. He was 63.
Shanghai Tang confirmed his death. The Financial Times, for which Mr. Tang wrote a weekly advice column, said the cause was cancer.
Mr. Tang was born into affluence in Hong Kong on Aug. 2,1954; his grandfather Tang Shiu Kin founded the city’s dominant Kowloon Motor Bus Company in 1933.
David was sent to the Perse School, a boarding school in Cambridge, England, when he was 13. He then studied philosophy at King’s College in London and law at Cambridge before returning to Hong Kong.
From the start he showed an uncommon entrepreneurial talent, creating a series of sophisticated and highly successful start-ups in Hong Kong, among them Shanghai Tang; the Pacific Cigar Company, with plush hideaways for cigar lovers; and the exclusive China Club, made up of elegant dining rooms at the top of a former bank building downtown, with décor featuring a collection of Mao-era Chinese art.
Mr. Tang also dabbled in oil exploration along the Chinese coastline and gold mining in Africa and Australia. He opened high-end restaurants in London and elsewhere. And he was sought out by multinational companies to join their boards, in part because of his connections in an economically expanding China. He became a prominent adviser to companies like Blackstone, Tommy Hilfiger and British Airways.
Mr. Tang said in 2012 that his founding of the Pacific Cigar Company in 1992 had been a formative experience in tapping into East Asia’s increasingly prosperous elite.
Appreciating that cigar lovers tended to be affluent but that cigar smoke was not always so loved by others, he set up clubs where cigars, wine and fine food could be enjoyed far from any crowds. He also obtained the exclusive right to import Cuba’s famous Habanos cigars.
Mr. Tang later sold much of his stake in Pacific Cigar but was still the company’s chairman at his death.
He founded Shanghai Tang in 1994, initially as a Hong Kong emporium to showcase lifestyle, fashion and home products that drew on the glamour of Chinese styles of the 1920s and’ 30s and gave them a more contemporary gloss.
