When our school first opened in 1890, it was called the Central School for Girls. Three years later in 1893, it was re-named Belilios Public School in honour of Mr. Emmanual Raphael Belilios, who had donated $25,000 to enable the school to have a new building in Hollywood Road. Mr. Belilios was a Jewish trader who came from India to Hong Kong in 1862. In Hong Kong, he had served as the Chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and also of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Group that owned the Mandarin and Peninsula Hotels. Thirty years after he set foot on Hong Kong, he was appointed to the Legislative Council in recognition of his many contributions to Hong Kong society.

However, Mr. Belilios was best remembered for being a great philanthropist. Before he made the $25,000 donation to enable our school to have a new 3-storeyed building, he had donated $5,000, one third of the total costs for setting up the Alice Memorial Hospital, which served as one of the major teaching hospitals for students of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (which later became the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong). With a view to promoting the welfare and education of Chinese girls who were driven to crimes and prostitution by poverty, Mr Belilios also made available the funding for establishing a probation home for girls. There was and is also an abundance of scholarships established with Mr Belilios' donations either during his lifetime or upon death. They have enabled needy students to pursue education at the universities.

Photo taken in the 1900's