Vanessa-Mae Vanakom Nicholson, was born in Singapore to an English father and a Chinese mother. At age three she took up the piano; at four her parents divorced, and she and her mother moved to England. At five, she switched from piano to violin, studying with Lin Yao Ji at the Central Conservatory in Beijing and Felix Andrievsky at the Royal College of Music in London. At nine, Vanessa-Mae made her concert debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra and toured England playing the Tchaikovsky concerto, with her mother, Pamela Nicholson, acting as co-manager. At 12 she toured with the London Mozart Players, and at 13, she began her recording career. Her early recordings have been repackaged by Angel as The Classical Collection 1.

Her breakthrough disc, The Violin Player, bowed on the charts in fall 1995, featuring a "Toccata and Fugue" based on Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and incorporating wailing electric guitar and a pumping, synthetic dance beat. The Violin Player was made with entirely commercial intentions, and the promotional material circulating at the time did nothing to understate the extraordinary allure of the young artist. The notorious "wet T-shirt" poses that appeared in the CD booklet and video raised eyebrows among commentators in the U.S., who published articles roundly condemning the classical music industry for exploiting children and flirting with obscenity. Despite the negative publicity, several of the tracks on The Violin Player were adopted into the mainstream of the dance club scene in Europe and Asia, and the disc went on to sell in excess of three million copies worldwide. In 1996, Vanessa-Mae won the Best New Female Artist distinction at the BRIT Awards; she was the first classical artist to do so.