Pi-hsien Chen was born in Taiwan and went to Cologne when she was nine years old. One year later, she was admitted in the class of Hans-Otto Schmidt-Neuhaus. At the age of 21, she won the first prize at the ARD-International-Piano-Competition in Munich, later the first prizes at the A.Schönberg-Competition in Rotterdam and at the J.S.Bach-Competition in Washington D.C.

She performed with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and all German Radio Symphony Orchestras. Conductors with whom she has worked, are Bernhard Haitink, Paul Sacher, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowsky, Hans Zender, Peter Eötvös and others. She has been a chamber music partner of Hermann Baumann, Pierre-Laurant Aimard, Augustin Dumay, Alyssa Park, Wolfgang Meyer and Julius Berger.

Pi-hsien Chen took part in numerous music festivals: she gave performances in the Schwetzinger Festspiele, the BBC Proms, the Osaka Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the Festival d'Automne Paris, the Festival Wien Modern and the Triennale Cologne 1994 and 1997.
Her increasing interest and engagement for contemporary music grew during co-operations with composers as John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Kurtag.

From 1983 until 2004, Pi-hsien Chen was a piano professor at the Musikhochschule in Köln. Currently, she teaches at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg.