YouTube star Wengie on (G)I-dle, her K-pop dream, TikTok and progressing as an artist
- Wengie started her career on YouTube with life hacks series and DIY craft tutorials, before moving into the South Korean world of ‘ulzzang’ make-up
- A K-pop collaboration with Minnie from girl band (G)I-dle followed, and she’s now all the rage on TikTok where she has 5 million followers
Wengie is one of the biggest names on YouTube, with an enormous and adoring fan base that has helped her videos notch up more than 1.2 billion views and her channel gain 14 million subscribers.
But the 34-year-old – who was born Huang Wenjie in Guangzhou, China, and moved to Sydney, Australia, as a child – is now moving beyond the “life hacks” videos that made her a star and is building a career in music, following her dream of becoming a K-pop star.
Wengie kick-started her YouTube career in a rather unconventional way. Besides the usual fodder of beauty and fashion videos, her highly relatable life hacks series and DIY craft tutorials helped her build up a loyal following, particularly among younger viewers.
But her love of all things Korean eventually led her into the world of ulzzang (“best face” in Korean) make-up and, of course, all things K-pop.
“Even though I grew up in Australia, I was really into K-pop and Asian make-up culture. Back then, there wasn’t a lot of content on that,” she tells the Post, looking back on the times when she would film ulzzang beauty tutorials and make her own K-pop music videos using nothing but a green screen.