Yeh's singing career started in the early 1980s and, shortly after, her acting career started as she sang songs specifically written for the movie soundtrack. She has released a total of thirty studio albums, plus compilations and live recordings. Yeh first relocated to Taiwan to pursue a career in singing, and later relocated to
Hong Kong, which at the time was the primary center of Chinese entertainment, for a better chance at fame. Ng Ching Yuen, who was the CEO of
Warner Music Hong Kong, arranged for her then-husband,
George Lam, to teach Yeh to sing and speak
Hong Kong Cantonese. Since then, Yeh has focused primarily on the Hong Kong Cantonese entertainment world. With the support of utilizing romanization to read Chinese characters in Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to her interactions within the Chinese entertainment business, she began to make improvements on both her spoken
Mandarin and
Cantonese, including reading
Chinese characters. However, because she never had a formal Chinese education, her proficiency in reading Chinese is still limited on various levels. When Yeh has to read Chinese characters, she still relies on
Mandarin romanization and
Cantonese romanization for support. In a July 2022 interview, Yeh admitted that over the years of her career singing Chinese songs, very often she is not able to fully understand the lyrics and has to listen to the arrangements of the music to be able to appropriately relate to the songs. Yeh has received the Most Popular Hong Kong Female Singer award at the
Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards four times (1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993). In 1992, Yeh collaborated with a couple of other western artists, recording "I'm Always Dreaming of You" with
Tommy Page in 1992 and "I Believe in Love" with
James Ingram the following year. In 2002, Yeh re-entered the
Cantopop market, released the record "Can You Hear", and performed a series of concerts in different countries. In 2011, Yeh received the Golden Needle Award at the 33rd
RTHK Top Ten Chinese Gold Song Music Award Ceremony. Yeh has also collaborated on a number of soundtracks (mostly on
Tsui Hark's movies with scores by
Wong Jim), including "Lai Ming But Yiu Loi" from
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which won the Best Original Song award at the
7th Hong Kong Film Awards. ==Image and artistry==