Born in Surabaya, East Java, in 1941, Cheng was raised in Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta. The forties in Indonesia were tumultuous under both Dutch as well as Japanese occupation during World War II. However, Cheng began studying art and drawing at a young age. Educated in Dutch international schools, her close-study of Flemish masters Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh, was foundational to her grasp of portraiture and the figure.

It wasn’t until she moved to Hawaiʻi in the late 1960s that Cheng learned batik, the textile tradition native to her homeland, at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. There she also developed a fascination with Oceanic textiles found in the Museum's collections. Hawaiian kapa (or tapa as it's called elsewhere in the Pacific), made from the bark of the wauke plant, bears intricately stamped motifs with delicate textured watermark patterns embedded into the finely beaten cloth. The moment of intersection was foundational in the formation of Cheng's visual language. Cheng wasnʻt interested in simply reproducing the detailed pattern-work of batik. Instead, she began painting women. Polynesian women adorned in kapa, with watery geometric pattern-work cascading over powerful, opulent bodies. Cheng celebrates the pattern-work of kapa through the use of her native batik process. Cheng worked in batik through the 1980s before taking up painting. However, her subject matter never faltered.

With a career that has spanned over fifty years, Cheng is still known for her powerful depictions of adorned Hawaiian women. Like akua wāhine, goddesses of lore, her women exude a powerful sensuality, gracefulness, and dignity that is mythical.

Her iconic compositions have been rendered into large-scale mosaic murals in public buildings, stained glass at the Grand Wailea Maui’s Beach Chapel, and textiles for Kahala Sportswear’s ubiquitous aloha shirts. You can find her work in the public collection of the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, as well as private collections including Hilton Hawaiian Village, Kaiser Permanente, First Hawaiian Bank, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's, and the Grand Wailea Resort on Maui.