Christy Chung born in Montreal to a Chinese father and a Vietnamese mother. Christy grew up in Brossard, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, with French and Vietnamese as mother-tongues. Chung later learned English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

While studying for a career in the tourism industry at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM), Chung entered and won the "Miss Chinese Montreal" contest in 1992. Girl then went to Hong Kong, in her first trip away from home, to participate in the Miss Chinese International pageant in January 1993, in which she won despite not knowing a single Chinese word. This opened doors for her to launch her acting career there, despite not speaking a word of Cantonese at the time, and despite her extremely limited acting experience (an uncredited ten-second non-speaking role as a gum-chewing prostitute in Denys Arcand's Love and Human Remains). Christy had to choose between acting in Hong Kong and becoming the weather-forecast presenter at Societe Radio-Canada, the French-language government television network in Canada.

A role in "The Bride with White Hair 2" brought her instant recognition, and she became a well-known star in Chinese-language popular culture, acting in a large number of films including some films starring Stephen Chow, as well as "The Bodyguard from Beijing" starring Jet Li. Actress was married for a time to Glen Ross, and gave birth to daughter (Yasmine) in Montreal in the middle of the 1998 Ice Storm. Chung and Ross were divorced in 2002, but remain on good terms. Christy has sole custody of Yasmine.

Giving birth to Yasmine temporarily had a negative effect on her career because of a stereotypical impression that a mother could not