When he lived in Johor Bahru, he commuted to FuChun Primary School in neighboring Singapore. He subsequently attended Pioneer Secondary School and Pioneer Junior College in Singapore. He attended the University of Melbourne in Australia, living at Trinity College. He graduated in 2009 with Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) and Bachelor of Laws degrees. He also obtained a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Australian National University in 2012.

Chieng performed with Trevor Noah in 2013 at a comedy festival in Melbourne, Australia. Two years later, he was asked to audition for the correspondent role on The Daily Show, which Noah hosted.

In July 2016, he was named one of 10 Comics to Watch by Variety.

In October 2016, Chieng appeared on The Daily Show to give his response to a Jesse Watters Fox News segment deemed by many as racist. Chieng aired an expletive-laden criticism of the conservative network’s segment. He also revisited New York City’s Chinatown, where Watters had mocked residents, and conducted more respectful interviews in Mandarin and Cantonese. The video went viral and received coverage in the Washington Post and Slate.

In 2016, Chieng co-wrote and starred in the pilot of a sitcom called Ronny Chieng: International Student, based on his own experience as a Malaysian student in Australia. It was developed into a series for Comedy Central in America and ABC TV in Australia and screened in June 2017.

Chieng has been living in New York City since 2015. He married Vietnamese-Australian Hannah Pham on September 9, 2016. In 2018, Chieng joked that he was cynophobic on the Daily Show, but later clarified in an interview that he was “100 per cent not scared of dogs”.

In 2018, he made his American feature debut with the film Crazy Rich Asians, directed by Jon M. Chu and starring Constance Wu and Henry Golding.

In 2019, Netflix started streaming his stand-up special, “Asian Comedian Destroys America!”, where he jokes about consumerism, racism and immigrants.

In April 2020, Chieng was cast in an undisclosed role in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.