Peng visits a koala park in Brisbane, Australia, while President Xi Jinping attends the G20 meeting in the city in November last year. [Photo by Rao Aimin / Xinhua]

The following summer, Peng invited the wives of leaders attending the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, to try their hand at Suzhou embroidery, helping to create a piece called "Silk Road."

She also led leaders' wives on a tour of Beijing's Summer Palace, an ancient royal landscape garden, during the APEC meeting, and took another contingent visiting in March for the Boao Economic Forum in south China to drink coffee and watch women making Li brocade, a textile produced by the Li ethnic group that has been listed by the UN as intangible cultural heritage.

Promoting culture is a major task for a first lady, and Peng is the perfect example, according to Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies. "People can discover the beauty of Chinese culture through her dresses and through her ideas," he said, adding that her image is one of "confidence and decency".

President Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan wave upon their arrival at an airport outside Moscow in March 2013. [Photo by Ding Lin / Xinhua]

Peng, who has been prepared for life under the media spotlight by a decades-long career as a singer, has also taken on the serious task of raising awareness of critical public health issues, including the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.

She has actively taken part in a campaign to tackle the condition since 2006, when she paid a visit to children affected by HIV/AIDS in East China's Anhui province. There, she made three short films with the children, calling for better care and a guaranteed right to education.

"The filming was rather tough," recalled Zhang Ying, chairwoman of the Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association. "The videos were shot in rural areas, and some scenes took as long as a day to finish."