Profile | Faye Wong’s career as Cantopop singer and actress, and her very public romances

A ‘natural-born actress’, Wong Kar-wai said. The bestselling female Cantopop artist. Yet Faye Wong left it all behind to be a wife and mum

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Hong Kong singer-actress Faye Wong, wearing a high heel hat, performs in Hong Kong in 2003. Twice married and twice divorced, Wong walked away from her career in 2005, and has appeared only sporadically on stage since then. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:15am, 14 Feb 2025

This is the 44th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades.

Faye Wong reigned supreme as Hong Kong’s diva of the 1990s. Her distinctive voice, artistic integrity, aversion to celebrity and unique style cemented her status..

While many will recognise her from her cover of The Cranberries’ track “Dreams” or her vocals on “Eyes on Me” (the theme song for the video game Final Fantasy VIII), her breakthrough came with her fourth studio album, Coming Home (1992).

Before this, the Beijing-born Wong had modelled and placed third in a singing competition, which led to a contract with record label Cinepoly. There, she studied under Tai See-chung, who mentored Cantopop superstars such as Anita Mui Yim-fong, Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, Andy Lau Tak-wah and Leon Lai Ming.

Faye Wong pictured at Hong Kong Stadium in 1994. Photo: SCMP

Initially, her birth name, Wang Fei, was deemed too mainland Chinese for Hong Kong audiences, so her label rebranded her Shirley Wong, or Wong Ching-man. But after her first three albums achieved only modest success, she was sent to New York for vocal training and cultural immersion.

It was there that Wong truly discovered herself. “I wandered around, visited museums and sat at cafes,” she later explained. “There were so many strange, confident-looking people. They didn’t care what other people thought of them.

SCMP Series

Hong Kong’s pop culture icons

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