Queenie Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1980, and migrated to Australia at the age of six.

While studying Information Systems at university she began drawing manga and, in 2004, was signed by the manga publisher Tokyopop to write a full-length graphic novel. That work was volume one in the Dreaming series, a supernatural mystery story about twin sisters who discover that their new boarding school, set deep in the remote Australian bush, is haunted by something evil. Drawn in a manga style, the series draws on Indigenous Australian concepts.

She has since collaborated with best-selling author Dean Koontz on the Odd Thomas graphic-novel series: In Odd We Trust (2008), Odd Is On Our Side (2010), and House of Odd (2012). The graphic novels were prequels to Koontz's long-running Odd Thomas series, following a short-order cook who can see and communicate with the dead. The graphic novels have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list.

In 2009, she also provided art for the Boys Book of Positive Quotations, by best-selling inspirational author Steve Deger. In 2012, she collaborated with Kylie Chan on Small Shen, a graphic novel set in Kylie Chan's Dark Heavens fantasy world. In 2016, she provided the illustrations for Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou and Cathy Sell's critical work Manga Vision: Cultural and Communicative Perspectives.

In 2015, Chan began a new three-volume series of graphic novels: Fabled Kingdom. A revisionist fairytale, the series follows Celsia, a 'Red Hood', or healer-in training, living with the putative grandmother deep in the woods until a shocking revelation sends her in pursuit of the Fabled Kingdom of Fallinor, said to have been destroyed six decades earlier. Unlike Chan's earlier work, Fabled Kingdom is a mixture of prose and comics. The second volume was nominated for a Ledger Award.

Queenie Chan has also written a number of short graphic works, mostly for Sydney-based Bento Comics' series of anthologies.

Chan has lived in Sydney.