Penny Tai is a Malaysian Chinese singer and songwriter in the Mandarin pop scene. Since her debut in 2000, she has released eight albums. Penny Tai was born in Johor, Malaysia, to a Hakka family. She started song-writing at the age of 17, participating in the Halo Song-writing Contest in Kuala Lumpur, a platform which also launched the career of fellow Malaysian singer, Fish Leong. In 1999, she was offered a contract by EMI Music (Taiwan) and moved to Taiwan pursue a career in singing and song-writing. She released her self-titled first album, Penny, in January 2000.