[2] Zhou began playing chess at three years old while living in Antibes in France,[4][5] where her father was working at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation.

[8] This achievement was widely celebrated in the media in Finland and led to her story being published in a national textbook for elementary school students.

[5] In addition to repeating as under-10 open champion for four years from 2007 through 2010,[4][9][10] Zhou won the Finnish Women's National Chess Championship in 2010 at the age of 10.

[11] As the Finnish under-10 national champion, Zhou qualified to play in the World Youth Chess Championship on several occasions.

[12] After switching to the new under-8 girls' division for her next two World Youth Championships, Zhou won a silver medal at the 2008 event, which was held in Vũng Tàu, Vietnam.

[15] Zhou earned her first FIDE rating after the 2010 World Youth Championship, starting at 1710 in January 2011 at the age of ten.

[16] Zhou continued to rise in rating over the next several years, first crossing 1900 in July 2013 a month after a good performance at the Gatineau Open.

[22] Towards the end of 2014, Zhou produced her best result of the year by winning the gold medal in the girls' under-14 division at the World Youth Championships in Durban, South Africa.

[28] In late May, Zhou won the girls' under-18 division at the North American Youth Chess Championships in Toluca, Mexico to earn the Woman International Master (WIM) title.

[4][29] After another large rating drop at the under-20 North American Female Championships, Zhou returned to Kecskemét for two more tournaments in August.

[16] During 2016, Zhou was awarded the FIDE Master (FM) title and also qualified for the Woman Grandmaster (WGM), the latter of which was not approved until the following year.

[33] At the Stockholm Chess Challenge in March, she won her last-round game against Toms Kantāns, who was then an International Master (IM) rated 2496 and is the highest-rated player she has defeated.

In-between, she travelled to Novi Sad in Serbia and had her best performance among these three events, scoring 7/9 at the IM Riblje Ostrvo 3 tournament, a ½ point more than what was needed for the norm.

[37] From 2017 onwards, Zhou began competing at fewer chess tournaments in part to focus on her studies at university.

[39][40] At the end of the year, Zhou was unable to defend her Canadian women's national championship, losing by a ½ point to Maili-Jade Ouellet.

She made her debut at the Women's Chess Olympiad in Tromsø in Norway, where she played on the fourth board behind Yuanling Yuan, Natalia Khoudgarian, and Alexandra Botez.

[48] Zhou played on the top board ahead of Yuan, Botez, and Lali Agbabishvili, but had a poor performance, scoring 4½/10 and losing 60 rating points.

[50] Zhou played on the second board behind Agnieszka Matras-Clement and ahead of Ouellet and Svitlana Demchenko, scoring 7/10 and gaining 20 rating points.

[58][60] She has also commentated on matches and coached participants in PogChamps, a series of tournaments run by Chess.com for popular non-chess streamers that began in 2020.

[60][61] Zhou was the first chess streamer to sign a professional contract with a major esports organization, joining Counter Logic Gaming in August 2020.

Many other leading chess streamers followed suit and signed with esports organizations later in the year, beginning with Nakamura about a week later.

[21] Starting in 2017, she pursued a bachelor's degree at the University of Toronto with a double major in economics and statistics, and a minor in mathematics.