Popularly known as the Cantopop Queen, Sammi Cheng first rose to fame as a singer in the 1990s, after getting her big break on TVB’s New Talent Singing Awards in 1988. Since then, she has racked up in excess of 80 albums, with cumulative sales of more than a million. She is also a prolific live performer, with more than 100 shows at the Hong Kong Coliseum alone, and was still touring to sell-out crowds in 2023. She has won most popular Hong Kong female artist at the Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards three times, and the MTV Asia Award for favourite Hong Kong artist from 2002 to 2004.

She is also an acclaimed actor, with a career that started out on TV in the 1990s but really kicked off with the 2000 romantic comedies Needing You... and Summer Holiday. Since then, she has starred in close to 40 films, including Wu Yen (2001), Infernal Affairs (2002) and Blind Detective (2013), and been nominated at the Hong Kong Film Awards 10 times, winning best actress in 2023 for her performance as a grieving mother in Lost Love, as well as best original film song. She has also picked up three best actress nominations at the Golden Horse Awards.

She has been open about her mental health struggles in the past, and took a break from her entertainment career for almost three years in the mid-2000s.