 Wong was born in Simpang Ampat, Malacca.Of mixed Chinese and ethnic Malay descent, she was taken in by her grandmother, a Malay Muslim married to a Chinese of Hainan origin who had converted to Islam; however, she was later adopted by a Chinese family and raised as a Buddhist.In 1936, Wong married Chiang Meng, a Chinese man sixteen years her senior; he did not convert to Islam, and Wong herself continued to practise Buddhism.