SINGAPORE — Actress, model and creative entrepreneur Chen Yixin has packed up and moved to Paris, but the 26-year-old says the decision is about much more than changing cities.
For someone who has spent virtually her entire life connected to Singapore’s entertainment industry, Paris represents a chance to find out what life might look like when she is no longer surrounded by everything—and everyone—she already knows.
Chen revealed her relocation on September 8 in a video filmed from her new apartment, telling followers that years of having her personal life discussed publicly had made her increasingly cautious about revealing who she really was.
She explained that she had spent years keeping much of herself private because she feared giving strangers more material with which to scrutinise her.
That caution eventually created another problem.
Chen said she began feeling increasingly disconnected from the content she was producing because she did not feel comfortable sharing the subjects and experiences that genuinely mattered to her.
Now, Paris appears to be her attempt to change that.
“I have to trust the process”
Chen said the move grew out of a simple question: what could her life look like somewhere completely new?
She acknowledged the apparent contradiction of wanting greater privacy while simultaneously opening more of her life to people online. But she said she now wants to create a community that understands her for who she actually is rather than only through stories or assumptions surrounding her public persona.
And there is an added element of uncertainty.
Chen said she currently has “no friends” in Paris, making the relocation much more than an extended trip with a familiar social circle. She plans to let followers accompany her through the experience as she figures out her new life.
CNA quoted her describing the move as something she has to trust while allowing herself room to grow.
That makes this chapter particularly significant for a performer who has rarely experienced life completely outside the orbit of Singapore show business.
Growing up famous before choosing fame herself
Chen is the daughter of two of Singapore television’s most recognisable veteran entertainers: Xiang Yun and Edmund Chen.
Her mother has been one of Singapore’s prominent Mandarin television actresses for decades, while her father stepped away from full-time acting when Yixin was young partly so that he could devote more time to raising her.
That family background meant public attention arrived long before Yixin had fully decided what she wanted her own career to become.
In her Paris announcement, she reflected on the existence of a long digital footprint documenting her growing up, describing that level of visibility as difficult for a young person. She said she became highly sensitive to outside commentary and opinions.
The pressure was not entirely imagined.
During an appearance with her mother on the 8days programme DNA earlier this year, Chen described experiencing ostracism while growing up and said she frequently returned home from school crying. She also acknowledged that some of her withdrawal came from the feeling that other people knew more about her than she knew about them.
For a child of celebrities, the normal process of figuring out an identity can happen while strangers are already forming opinions about it.
Paris now gives Chen something she has rarely had: distance.
The move did not come completely out of nowhere
Look at what Chen had been saying earlier this year and the Paris decision begins to make more sense.
In a May interview with ELLE Singapore, Chen said she had become far more selective about her professional life and was trying to understand what her own creative voice actually was.
Rather than accepting projects simply for visibility, she said she wanted fewer projects that genuinely reflected her point of view.
That represents a notable shift for someone whose career has moved across acting, modelling, music, fashion and social-media work.
Chen told ELLE that acting often means carrying out another creator’s vision, whereas fashion gives her greater control over the story, visual language and message.
Her desire for independence also led her to establish Beike, a swimwear label launched in 2024 and designed partly around Asian body types.
But she subsequently paused the brand rather than continue expanding simply for the sake of momentum, saying she wanted to protect the project until she felt the product and vision were ready.
Those decisions point toward the same theme now driving her Paris move:
less performance for other people’s expectations, more control over what comes next.
Why Paris may matter creatively
Paris is not merely a glamorous backdrop for Chen.
Months before announcing the move, she had already described travel as a way of resetting her creative perspective.
Chen told ELLE that being surrounded by unfamiliar places forces her to notice things differently—light, textures, clothing and the way people move—and that those observations eventually influence her creative work.
She maintains a separate travel-focused Instagram account featuring trips to destinations including Bhutan and Sweden.
Paris potentially brings that process into everyday life.
Instead of returning home after several days of inspiration, she will now be living in one of the world’s major centres for fashion, design, art and photography while trying to determine where her own work goes next.
That makes the move potentially significant not only personally but professionally.
Chen has not announced that she is abandoning Singapore entertainment, nor has she announced a new French acting, modelling or fashion contract.
Any suggestion that she has permanently left Singapore show business would therefore go beyond what she has publicly said.
For now, the clearest description is simpler: she has relocated to Paris to explore a different life and give herself room to grow.
Singapore celebrities rally around her
The announcement quickly drew supportive messages from other Singapore entertainment personalities.
Actress Chantalle Ng encouraged Chen and suggested she look up former Singapore actress and host Sharon Au, who has long been based in Paris.
Au herself then appeared in the comments, reassuring Chen that she was there, prompting Xiang Yun to express her thanks.
It was a lighthearted exchange, but it also underscored something Chen had openly admitted: she is beginning this phase without an established circle of friends around her.
This is not simply another celebrity move overseas
Second-generation celebrity stories often revolve around whether children can reproduce the success of famous parents.
Chen appears to be asking a different question.
Instead of how closely she can follow the path created by Xiang Yun and Edmund Chen, she seems increasingly interested in discovering what happens when she deliberately moves away from the environment that defined her.
That distinction matters.
Her move follows a period in which she has become more selective about acting and commercial opportunities, paused her own fashion business rather than force its growth and spoken publicly about wanting greater authorship over her creative identity.
Paris may produce a new acting career.
It could lead deeper into fashion.
It could result in new music or content.
Or it could simply give Chen the distance necessary to decide which of those worlds she actually wants.
She has not yet provided the answer.
And that may be precisely the point.
At 26, after spending much of her life being known as Xiang Yun and Edmund Chen’s daughter, actress Chen Yixin, model Chen Yixin or public figure Chen Yixin, she is moving somewhere she says she barely knows anyone.
The biggest story may therefore not be that Chen Yixin has moved to Paris.
It is who she decides to become once nobody there expects her to be the person Singapore already knows.
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