The relationship between leaf area and leaf biomass is important for understanding the trade-off between leaf carbon investment and return. According to the "diminishing returns hypothesis", the leaf area should scale allometrically with leaf biomass, with the allometric scaling exponent <1.0. However, it is not clear whether such hypothesis holds true for the leaves belonging to the different canopy height (upper and lower canopy) and different life types (evergreen and deciduous) of subtropical woody plants. The standardized major axis regression method was used to test the scaling relationship between leaf area and leaf biomass of 69 woody plants in Yangjifeng Nature Reserve, Jiangxi. The results showed that the leaf area differed significantly between evergreen and deciduous plants (P<0.05), whereas, no significant difference in the biomass of small branches and leaves were detected in the current year twigs in different life types and in different canopy heights (P>0.05). The leaf mass per area (LMA) of evergreen and deciduous plants was significantly different (P<0.05). At the same canopy height, the LMA of evergreen plants was significantly higher than that of deciduous plants (P<0.05). Furthermore, LMA of deciduous plants differed significantly in different canopy heights (P<0.05). The scaling exponents between leaf area and leaf biomass plants varied significantly among 69 subtropical woody species. 60.9% of species showed isometric relationship between leaf area and leaf biomass. Furthermore, the scaling relationship between leaf area and leaf biomass of different canopy heights and life types all shared the sometric exponent, but with different scaling constants. These results indicated that canopy heights and life types did not change the isometric scaling relationship between leaf area and biomass for such in 69 subtropical woody species, and did not support the "diminishing returns" hypothesis.