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His next play, Rich Relations, was his first to feature non-Asian characters.

It premiered at the Second Stage Theatre in New York and, though not a success, did prepare him for his work on his best-known play, M. Butterfly, for which he won a Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, the John Gassner Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

It was also his second play to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The play is a deconstruction of Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly.

The play is also loosely based on news reports of the relationship between a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, and Shi Pei Pu, a male Chinese opera singer who purportedly convinced Boursicot that he was a woman throughout their twenty-year relationship.

The play premiered on Broadway in 1988 and made Hwang the first Asian American to win the Tony Award for Best Play.