Barbara Fei began her music studies at the National Music Conservatory in Nanjing, studying the piano with Ding Shan-de and Yih Kai-chee.  She started her vocal training in Hong Kong in 1950 with Professor Chao Mei-pa, before studying in France from 1956 at the Conservatoire de Lyon, subsequently studying with Lotte Schoene at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.

Returning to Hong Kong in 1960 she gave many recitals and broadcasts here on radio and television and preformed in other Asian cities and New Zealand and America.  To promote choral music and an interest in Western Music among the youth of Hong Kong she founded the Allegro Singer in 1964.

In 1980, Barbara Fei was the first artist from Hong Kong to be invited by the Chinese Musicians Association to preform in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and since then she has promoted musical exchanges between Hong Kong and China through scholarships and facilitating the connections between the musicians of Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.

Chairman of the music committee of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Music Director and conductor of the Allegro Singers, Chairman of the Hong Kong Ethnomusicological Society, Senior advisor the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Music Director and conductor of the Chinese Oratorio Society and many other musical organisations in Hong Kong, Barbara Fei has tirelessly promoted music in Hong Kong: as Chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Choral Societies, she has organised the presentation of many choral seminars, conferences and grand choral concerts to promote the choral arts in Hong Kong.

In 2001, Barbara Fei was awarded the Hong Kong Bronze Bauhinia Star for her services to music, and in 2006 was appointed by the People’s Republic of China to be a member of the National Committee of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.