Can an ng-content be used inside of an ngFor?

Yes, it will not give you proper result. But this can be achieved by ng-template and TemplateRef.

I have made a demo. You can see the demo that may help.

child.component.html

<li *ngFor="let rowDetail of dataSource">
  <ng-container
     *ngIf="headerTemplateRef"
     [ngTemplateOutlet]="headerTemplateRef"
     [ngTemplateOutletContext]="{$implicit:rowDetail}"
  >
  </ng-container>
</li>

child.component.ts

@ContentChild('header',{static: false}) headerTemplateRef: TemplateRef<any>;

parent.component.html

<child-app [data]="data"> 
    <ng-template let-rowDetail #header>
        <div style="padding-left:35px;">
            <div>{{rowDetail.name}}</div>
        </div>
    </ng-template>
</child-app>

It is possible but probably doesn't produce the desired result. Children passed by the parent can only projected once (no matter how many <ng-content> are there. If the <ng-content> elements don't select specific and different parts of the passed children using the select attribute, then everything is projected to the first <ng-content> with the default selector (none).

To make this work you probably want a custom ngFor that repeats the content passed to <ng-content>.

NgFors ngForTemplate might help in your use case.

See also Angular2 child component as data