Born in Hong Kong with ancestry from Harbin, China, Coco is the youngest of three children. She has two elder sisters, Nancy, who was her manager before, and Carol. Her father died when she was young, and Coco moved at the age of ten with her mother and sisters to San Francisco, California. She went through school while experimenting with her singing voice, and followed her elder sisters in entering several local singing contests. She attended Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco. Later on, Coco had a brief enrollment at the University of California Irvine. Coco is close to her mother, who managed her career before.
