Next gen publicly urges tycoon father to accept she's gay

Cheuk Nang Holdings next-gen Gigi Chao has penned an open letter to her father, and company founder, Cecil Chao following his public appeal to find a male suitor to turn her straight.

Despite the fact she has been in a nine-year relationship with another woman, who she married in a civil ceremony in France in 2012, her father offered a dowry of HK$500 million (€47.1 million) to any man that could persuade Gigi to marry them.

When no suitors could achieve that task, he later doubled the offer to HK$1 billion.

Chao (pictured, right), worth an estimated $550 million (€402.6 million), acquired luxury property development business Cheuk Nang Holdings in 1988. Gigi, 33, serves as an executive director, along with her half brother Howard, 28.

Initially laughing off her father’s efforts, Gigi, 33, has now penned an open letter in the South China Morning Post, urging Chao to accept her homosexual relationship.

"As your daughter, I would want nothing more than to make you happy,” she wrote. “But in terms of relationships, your expectations of me and the reality of who I am, are not coherent," she wrote.

Of her relationship, she said: "I know it's difficult for you to understand how I could feel romantically attracted to a woman. I suppose I can't really explain it either. It just happens very peacefully and gently, and after so many years, we still love each other very much."

She added she realised her father and her partner where unlikely ever to become best of friends, but asked that he ceased to be "terrified" of her partner.

She concluded: "I'm sorry to mislead you to think I was only in a lesbian relationship because there was a shortage of good, suitable men in Hong Kong. There are plenty of good men, they are just not for me."

Gigi is the eldest of Chao’s three children – all from different relationships. His youngest child, Roman, is 19.