Chng grew up poor in Katong, in a "leaky attap house in Kampung Chai Chee."[4] Her parents wanted all of their seven children to go to school.[4] Chng attended Chung Cheng High School which had an art department taught by teachers from the Shanghai Art Academy.[7] Later, in 1966, she attended the Teachers' Training College.[5] She began to teach Chinese at the Tanjong Katong Girls' School later that year.[4] Eventually, Chng started taking art lessons privately, and then attended the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts where she received a diploma in Western painting.[4] In 1979, she received a BA from the Hull College of Higher Education in England.[4] Also in 1979, she had an exhibition of prints at the National Museum of Art Gallery in Singapore.[4] Chng then received an award from the Ministry of Culture to study advanced printmaking in 1980.[4] In 1983 she earned her master's degree in arts from New Mexico State University and then a masters of fine arts from the University of Iowa in 1985.[4]
In 1986, Chng headed the print-making department at Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts.[3] She was also an art editor for the Joint Publishing Company in Hong Kong.[8]
In June 1988, Chng and a group of her students were visiting art museums of Europe.[3] While trying to catch a bus with her students, Chng fell and hit her head on the pavement in London.[3] After the accident, Chng experienced bouts of dizziness and while back in Singapore, found out that she had a brain abscess.[3] Chng lost 90% of her vision in 1988[9] after she had surgery on the brain abscess caused by the fall.[10] For about a year after becoming nearly blind, she felt "tormented" but then she became "philosophical about it."[3] She said that finally meeting other blind people was a turning point.[3] Another turning point was an invitation to return to the print-making department at Lasalle.[5] Brother Joseph McNally, president emeritus at Lasalle, reached out to her because he said that even without her sight, Chng still commanded good print-making technique.[3] Chng was able to "see" the colors of her prints in her mind.[11] She said of her work, "I had all the basics in my mind and I had to slowly start using them."[5] She said that losing her sight forced her to "rely on her feelings."[12] Chng taught at Lasalle until 1997.[13]
Chng "never hesitated to comment on the social milieu" in her work.[13] In 2001, she was named Woman of the Year by Singapore's magazine, Her World.[10]
While Chng was a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in 2003, she protested the United States invasion of Iraq with other artists.[14] The work that resulted from her experience range from landscapes of Vermont to prints inspired by the Iraq War.[14]
In 2005, she was the first person from Singapore to hold a solo exhibition at the Headquarters of the United Nations.[15] Chng explored the opportunity of showing her work at the UN after she heard about a Chinese artist showing work there.[15] She contacted an old schoolmate, Lee Fong Yang who works at the UN Headquarters, who inquired on her behalf and helped her arrange the show.[15] She also received the Cultural Medallion that same year.[5]
In 2007, she received the Singapore Chinese Literary Award from the Singapore Literature Society.[16]
Chng had a retrospective exhibition at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2011.[5] In 2014, she was inducted into the Singapore Women's Hall of Fame.[6] In 2015, Chng was recognized by the Singapore Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth "as a pioneer of the modern printmaking practice in Singapore."[17]
Chng died of cancer at the age of 73 on 6 September 2019.[2]
