[6][7] In Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture, Jeroen de Kloet characterised her as "singer, actress, mother, celebrity, royalty, sex symbol and diva all at the same time".

[17] Despite her mother's opposition, Wong released 6 low-cost cover albums from 1985 to 1987 while still in high school, all in the form of cassettes, mostly consisting of songs by her personal idol, iconic Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng.

For the last of these early recordings, the producer Wei Yuanqiang chose the title Wong Fei Collection, intending to show that he recognised a distinctive talent in the teenager.

[12] Following a brief modeling stint, she began taking singing lessons as a distraction with Tai See-Chung (戴思聰), an Indonesian-born Chinese who had gone to school in Mainland China before tutoring Hong Kong superstars Anita Mui, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok.

Under the arrangement of Lo, who founded Music Factory in 1990 (later becoming the Hong Kong subsidiary of Rock Records), Wong went to the United States for professional training at the end of 1991.

(Thanks to Wong's cover, this 1972 song—in different language versions—would in the early 1990s become a huge regional hit in Thailand, Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia and even Turkey; the most popular English version was titled "Broken-Hearted Woman".)

In September 1993, her next album 100,000 Whys showed considerable alternative music influences from the West, including the popular song "Cold War" (冷戰), a cover of "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos.

With four best-selling albums in Cantonese and Mandarin and a record-breaking 18 consecutive concerts in Hong Kong, Wong had established herself as a diva, or "heavenly queen" (天后) as she is commonly known in the Chinese world, by the mid-1990s.

She was frequently in touch with the Beijing rock scene, where Dou Wei was a leading light and whose influence distinguished her from the mainstream pop music in Hong Kong.

Faye Wong and Dou Wei were the winner and the runner-up to the 1995 MTV International Viewer's Choice Award, with the music videos "Chess" and "Black Dream" respectively.

Sing and Play was released in October, and contained four songs composed by Wong: the opening track "Emotional Life", "Face", "A Little Clever" and "Tong" (both written for her daughter, the latter produced by Dou Wei).

[46][47] When the game was released in North America later that year, the theme song became very popular among gamers in the West; while it was not a mainstream hit there (as Wong had no desire to explore these markets), she gained many fans who were not previously familiar with her music.

The album Lovers & Strangers was released in late September,[51] and sold over 800,000 copies, topping the charts in Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

Elements of spirituality, metaphysics and Buddhism hold an important place in the lyrics as well, penned by Albert Leung who has by then, been unanimously identified as Wong's lyricist par excellence.

Her other activities during this year included the Pepsi promotional duet and music video of "Galaxy Unlimited" with Aaron Kwok as well as several concerts in China and Taiwan.

However, due to Zhang Yadong's unavailability during this period (he was engaged on other projects), Wong decided to treat this last album with EMI as an experiment whereby she would collaborate with new producers/musicians/lyricists and 'see what their vision of her will be'.

Wong herself admitted that she was not totally satisfied with some tracks, namely those produced by Taiwan's “father of rock” Wu Bai,[citation needed] which had an industrial electronica flavour reminiscent of Karen Mok's album Golden Flower.

[66] She did, however, come out to sing "Wishing We Last Forever" in May 2008 at a CCTV fundraising event for Sichuan earthquake victims,[67] and "Heart Sutra" in May 2009 for a Buddhist ceremony at the Famen Temple.

[79] Nicholas Tse, Wong's boyfriend and the Greater China chairman of Digital Domain, who oversaw the VR live broadcast, defended her on social media, saying, "She sounds great on her own!

[82] On September 21, 2021, Wong was featured in a pre-recorded performance of “Bay” (灣), the theme song of the CCTV Mid-Autumn Festival Gala in Shenzhen, co-hosted by Nicholas Tse.

In 2002, she co-starred with Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Zhao Wei, and Chen Chang in the comedy Chinese Odyssey 2002 (2002), directed by Jeffrey Lau and supervised by Wong Kar-wai.

In 2001, she released a Buddhist album, Loving Kindness & Wisdom (悲智雙運), to raise funds for the Nepalese lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche and to support the construction of the world's largest Maitreya Buddha statue.

In a 2011 Weibo post, Wong associated the power of religion with the survival of a wooden Buddhist object in a fire in Shenyang earlier that year, inciting an online spat with Fang Zhouzi, a popular science writer who ridiculed her belief.

[95] In 2016, the Chinese government warned Wong and other celebrities against fraternising with the Dalai Lama after she attended a Buddhist assembly in India with members of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

After her release of Miyuki Nakajima's "Mortal World" (人間) in 1997, she ended her concerts for the next few years with this song while shaking hands with the audience, then taking a deep bow to a horizontal position before leaving the stage.

Dutch scholar Jeroen Groenewegen credits Wong's mass appeal to some of her perceived "cool" traits including autonomy, unique artistry and childishness.

The photographs taken, showing her entering an unhygienic community toilet in a narrow hutong to dump urine—in sharp contrast to the modern and glamorous lives Hong Kong celebrities led—caused quite a stir, with some in Cinepoly fearing that her diva image would be tarnished.

[130] Chen Tao, a China Radio International DJ, compares Wong's influence in the Sinophone world to Madonna's in America: "She represents a certain era of pop music, a certain trend, and a vision of being unique.

[137][138] Wong's songs have been covered in other languages, including "Meteor" (流星) in Japanese by Hanayo,[139] "Chanel" (香奈兒) in Korean by Lim Hyung-joo,[140] and "Red Bean" (紅豆) in Vietnamese by various artists.

[143] Japanese director Shunji Iwai had explained that the titular pop-star character of his 2001 film All About Lily Chou-Chou was conceived after attending a Faye Wong concert.