Meet Hong Kong icon Donnie Yen’s talented daughter, Jasmine Yen: from fangirling over Selena Gomez to posting her own Blackpink-calibre music videos, is the 18 year old set to be a pop star?
Donnie is a huge name in Hong Kong, but has also made waves in Hollywood with his roles in Star Wars and Mulan, and is about to hit screens again in the hotly anticipated John Wick: Chapter 4. Wang, meanwhile, is a model who won the Miss Chinese Toronto Pageant in 2000.
Daughter Jasmine appears to be a chip off the old block. She already has her mum’s height of 181cm at the age of just 18, according to 8 Days, and clearly loves the entertainment business as much as her parents do.
Here’s what else we know about her.
She’s a singer-songwriter extraordinaire
Jasmine has been impressing Hong Kong with her singing voice since she was 12, and even stood up and performed Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All for the audience at 2017’s Save the Children Annual Gala Dinner.
In Donnie’s Instagram dedication to his daughter on her 18th birthday, he posted a video montage that showed her evolution from singing child to talented teen. But one of the things her parents seem most proud of are her songwriting skills. Jasmine wrote a song for her grandfather who died in 2020, titled No Man Could, which she sang on the piano and which Yen posted on his Facebook.
Her mother shared the song on her Instagram account too alongside videos showing how close Jasmine was to her grandfather.
Might she start her own girl group, or go solo?
With Jasmine’s increasingly impressive vocal talents, there’s no question that she is headed for greatness. Because aside from hitting those high notes, the young Yen can also bust a move. And no, we’re not talking about looking pretty good in a TikTok video, but rather pulling off some seriously professional choreography.
For her 17th birthday last year, Jasmine posted a dance video choreographed by Danie Chan. Reminiscent of a slick Shakira or Blackpink MV, the performance had backup dancers, lights, outfit changes and professional make-up. Earlier posts seem to suggest that the teen also loves to dance to Dua Lipa and Britney Spears songs.
With her family’s star quality and her singing and dancing talents, it’s definitely no stretch of the imagination to see her becoming Hong Kong’s next big pop star.
She’s appeared in Cosmopolitan and Vogue Taiwan
Yen scored her first magazine shoot in Cosmopolitan Hong Kong in 2019. However, when her proud dad shared photos from the shoot on Facebook, not everyone was on board with the outfit the magazine had gone with, criticising the super short shorts, knee high socks and hot pink heels as not being age appropriate, according to Asia One.
Six months after the Cosmopolitan shoot, Yen appeared again in Vogue Taiwan. This time she was rocking an ethereal pink dress and white trainers, and her Instagram followers were in raptures.
The magazine shoot was accompanied by a short interview with the father-daughter duo, where Jasmine can be seen wearing the same dress.
She’s off to Berklee College of Music
One of the best pieces of news the Yen family shared online this year, aside from Jasmine’s seemingly never ending 18th birthday celebrations, was the fact that she was awarded a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in the US.
According to mum Wang’s post, she also got accepted into every one of the universities she applied to. Berklee College of Music has been Jasmine’s university of choice since she was 15, Wang wrote.
Famous alumni of the school include John Mayer, Quincy Jones, Charlie Puth, Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford, and award-winning composer of the Game of Thrones score Ramin Djawadi, to name a few.
Although she grew up with famous parents, she still gets star-struck
In 2016, she posted a throwback photo of her and her little brother with the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, including Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and director J.J. Abrams, saying she was “legit over excited” to meet them.
Then, in 2020, she shared a post of herself beaming alongside two of her “favourite Disney warriors”, Mulan and Princess Jasmine (aka Liu Yifei and Naomi Scott).
- The daughter of Star Wars and John Wick action star Donnie Yen and model Cissy Wang, Jasmine Yen has gone from warbling child to talented teen in recent years
- She dances to Britney Spears and Dua Lipa songs, starred in her own Blackpink-meets-Shakira-esque music video – and just won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in the US