BEIJING — She was a face that people passed on the sidewalk without noticing, a sickly young woman with red lipstick and a pile of clothes. She hawked skirts for $15 and scarves for $10, joking with passers-by about the tedium of life.

But to those who stopped to listen, the woman, Liu Lingli, offered an extraordinary tale. She had once been a university teacher of English in Lanzhou, a city in northwest China, but she was fired for absenteeism after being treated for ovarian cancer. She decided to sue the school for wrongful termination, and in the meantime, to sell clothes on the street to pay her medical bills.

For much of the last two years, Ms. Liu grappled with her medical and legal battles in private. But on Monday, her story exploded into the public sphere, after Lanzhou Jiaotong University said it was “deeply sorry” and agreed to pay the wages it had denied her.

There was only one problem: After months of legal wrangling, Ms. Liu, 32, died on Aug. 14 from complications of cancer.