Ming-Na ("enlightenment") was born on the island of Macau, forty miles
from Hong Kong. Her mother, Lin Chan Wen, divorced her father when
Ming-Na was only a toddler. She has an older brother named Jonathan.
After the divorce, they moved to Hong Kong where her mother became a
nurse. There her mother met Soo Lim Yee, a U.S. businessman. They soon
married, and at four years, Ming-Na moved with her family to Queens,
New York. Five years later, they transferred to Yee's hometown of
Pittsburgh where his family runs the Chinatown Inn restaurant. Jonathan
and half-brother, Leong, now manage this restaurant. Struggling to fit
in at school, she changed her name to Maggie & Doris. She found a love
for acting while appearing in a third grade Easter play, where she
played a klutzy bunny. Her mother was not excited about her desire to
pursue acting, She preferred that she go into medicine. Nonetheless,
Ming-Na graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in
theatre. She got her first acting job in 1988 on the soap
Jung und Leidenschaftlich - Wie das Leben so spielt (1956).
Her big break came when she was cast in
Töchter des Himmels (1993). When
she needed a ride to the premiere of the film, her acting instructor
sent one of his students,
Eric Michael Zee. The two started
dating in 1994 after Ming-Na moved permanently to Los Angeles and
married in 1995, dropping her last name, Wen, at that time. She says
she is now like Ann-Margret. Zee is a
screenwriter and, with Ming-Na, manages At Last, a boy band.
