This study discusses how scenes and model’s appearance, gender and makeup status influence the preference facial skin tone of Chinese models for Chinese observers. This research also explores how the models’ preference differ from the stranger observers. The results show that the makeup status can affect the scope of the preference area. The preference centers exhibit a trend of higher lightness and smaller hue angles than original ones. In all scenes except indoor scenes, a higher CCT correlates with a greater inclination angle of the ellipsoid projection on the a*-b* plane, a narrower ellipsoid range, and a smaller hue angle of the ellipsoid center. Apart from the in-lab scenario, higher scene color temperatures are associated with a larger chroma increment and a smaller hue increment in the preference centers relative to the original image skin tones. Also, the chroma of the preference centers of indoor and in-lab scenes is lower than that of the original images, distinguishing them from other scenes. The models’ preference is influenced by their actual skin color to a larger extent.