<p>Given the widespread societal discourse surrounding facial attractiveness, live-streaming e-commerce (LSE) operators have legitimate reasons to pay attention to viewers’ perceptions of anchors’ facial attractiveness. Drawing on impression formation theory and attention allocation theory, this study constructs a theoretical model to examine the effects of anchors’ perceived facial attractiveness on both monetary and non-monetary performance in LSE, while also investigating the moderating role of anchors’ body movements as subsequent dynamic visual cues. Empirical analysis based on structured and unstructured data from 1472 Douyin live-streaming sessions validates the proposed model. The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between perceived facial attractiveness and monetary performance, and a significant positive relationship between perceived facial attractiveness and non-monetary performance. Moderation analysis indicates that body movements significantly moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between facial attractiveness and monetary performance by shifting the turning point to the right. However, the positive effect of facial attractiveness on non-monetary performance remains unaffected by body movements. These findings suggest an asymmetric effect of anchors’ perceived facial attractiveness on the two types of performance: the effect on non-monetary performance is robust, whereas the effect on monetary performance is context-dependent. This study provides practical implications for anchor selection and marketing strategy optimization in the LSE context.</p>