The wuxia film Come Drink with Me (1966) launched Cheng into superstardom, making her Hong Kong's first official kung fu screen queen.

[9] Late in her career, she gained renewed popularity through the Chinese reality show Divas Hit the Road (2014).

In addition to her Chinese-language works, Cheng also appeared in English-language productions, including Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), Lifting (2014), Meditation Park (2017) and Mulan (2020).

[10] Cheng attended World Elementary School in Shanghai, where she was a schoolmate of future movie stars Grace Chang and Chen Hou.

Cheng gained fame for starring in the Hong Kong wuxia film Come Drink with Me (1966), directed by King Hu.

Set during the Ming Dynasty, it stars Cheng as Golden Swallow, a skilled swordswoman on a mission to rescue her brother.

[12] In 1970, at the peak of her career, Cheng married and subsequently retired from acting, moving to the United States for her husband's business endeavors.

[13] In the 1980s, Cheng founded a television production company in the United States and traveled across Hawaii and Northern California at her own expense to produce a documentary series about Chinese Americans.

In 2000, she returned to international attention with her role as Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon[14], directed by Ang Lee, whom Cheng had befriended in the 90s when she was host of KSCI's Mandarin talk show, Pei-Pei's Time.

[15] In 2019, Cheng was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration, but chose to keep the diagnosis private and spend her remaining time with her children and grandchildren.

The two often quarreled over Chan‘s infidelity and Cheng eventually left him for Yueh Hua, the leading actor in Come Drink with Me.