Hunan Normal University (HNU) was founded in 1938 and is located in Changsha, a historical and cultural city. HNU is a "Project 211" university, a national "double first-class" university and a "double first-class" university jointly constructed by the Ministry of Education and Hunan Province. It has been rated as an excellent university by the Ministry of Education in the assessment of the level of undergraduate education in ordinary higher education institutions. It is also a "world-class discipline construction university" in Hunan Province.

HNU has established cooperation and exchange relations with 191 universities and institutions in 46 countries and regions for people-to-people exchange and cooperation in teaching and scientific research. It has established Confucius Institutes with Kazan Federal University in Russia, Wonkwang University in South Korea, and Southern Utah University in the United States, respectively. It has launched Sino-foreign cooperative programs with the Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory in Russia, the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, the University of Delaware in the US and the Mediadesign Hochschule (MD.H) Berlin in Germany. HNU has a model base for foreign students studying in China and a training and research center for studying abroad supported by the Ministry of Education and a Chinese language education base supported by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. Three national and regional research centers, including the American Studies Center of Hunan Normal University, have been included in the list of national and regional research centers of the Ministry of Education. The university library has a collection of more than 4 million books, including more than 220,000 ancient books, and has subscribed to 113 literature databases of various types. HNU sponsors 14 publicly available academic journals, including 7 Chinese core journals. The university's publishing house has been evaluated as one of the "Top 100 Publishing Units in China" and a national first-level publishing house.

Since its establishment, HNU has provided more than 500,000 graduates for the country, trained a large number of international students and students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. HNU alumni are all over the world. HNU has more than 40,000 students, including more than 10,000 postgraduate students and nearly 1,200 long- and short-term international students. A multi-standard and multi-level operation pattern has been formed.

Looking to the future, HNU will always uphold the school motto of “benevolence, love, excellence and diligence”, and its fundamental mission of fostering virtue in education. Based in Hunan, HNU serves the whole country. It embraces the world and firmly promotes its quality, innovative, distinctive, sustainable and harmonious development. HNU will strive to become a high-level comprehensive university with distinctive teacher education. It will be first-class in China and boast a greater international influence.