Nguyen was born on February 19, 1973, in Saigon (currently Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam.

Nguyen’s 2011 short film, The Potential Wives of Norman Mao,[9] starred Ed Lin, Tina Chen, Cindy Cheung, Ron Nakahara, and was narrated by George Takei.

In 2015, Nguyen wrote and directed The Housemaid (Cô Hầu Gái in Vietnamese[10]), a gothic romance horror film set in 1953 Vietnam during the First Indochina War.

It tells the story of an orphaned country girl who falls in love with the French landowner at a haunted rubber plantation.

[12][13][14] In 2019, Nguyen co-founded the production company The Population with producers Mynette Louie and Mollye Asher.