In this paper, we introduce the first Aeppli-Chern class for complex manifolds and show that the
(
1
,
1
)
(1,1)
-component of the curvature
2
2
-form of the Levi-Civita connection on the anti-canonical line bundle represents this class. We systematically investigate the relationship between a variety of Ricci curvatures on Hermitian manifolds and the background Riemannian manifolds. Moreover, we study non-Kähler Calabi-Yau manifolds by using the first Aeppli-Chern class and the Levi-Civita Ricci-flat metrics. In particular, we construct explicit Levi-Civita Ricci-flat metrics on Hopf manifolds
S
2
n
−
1
×
S
1
\mathbb {S}^{2n-1}\times \mathbb {S}^1
. We also construct a smooth family of Gauduchon metrics on a compact Hermitian manifold such that the metrics are in the same first Aeppli-Chern class, and their first Chern-Ricci curvatures are the same and non-negative, but their Riemannian scalar curvatures are constant and vary smoothly between negative infinity and a positive number. In particular, it shows that Hermitian manifolds with non-negative first Chern class can admit Hermitian metrics with strictly negative Riemannian scalar curvature.