Early Life
Lum was adopted at birth, and never knew her parents; she was brought up by a woman she called her grandmother. When Lum was only three, her grandmother gambled away her savings; they lost the house in which they were living, and moved to a leaky shack without running water. She came to Singapore at the age of 15 and enrolled at the Tiong Bahru Secondary School, where she supported herself through tutoring and sales jobs. She went on to study at Serangoon Junior College and graduated in 1986 with an Honours degree in chemistry from the Faculty of Science of the National University of Singapore.
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