Tuong-Phi Le grew up in Alief, Texas, a vibrant immigrant community on the southwest side of Houston. She began her creative career as a writer, producing both journalistic stories for the Kerronicle, an award-winning student publication, and short fiction that appeared in literary magazines such as TeenInk, Skipping Stones, and Cicada. Her work drew not only on her experiences as a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, but also her volunteer work as an ESL and Vietnamese teacher trying to bridge the language barrier between diasporic generations—perspectives which continue to inform her art today.

After graduating with two Bachelor of Arts degrees (economics, environmental sustainability) and a new language (Arabic) from the University of Oklahoma, Le briefly worked as a GIS cartographer in Tulsa, Oklahoma before moving home to Houston in 2019 to become a data integrator and eventually a software engineer. In 2022, she transitioned from a mainly digital art practice to working with more traditional media, including acrylic and oil painting, Chinese ink, and embossed metal. In 2023, she became a member of the Visual Arts Alliance (VAA) and began exhibiting in curated shows at Hardy and Nance Studios in Houston, Texas. Recently, Le's work has been juried into exhibitions mounted by the Art League of Baytown (Upcycle Challenge, Aug.-Sep. 2023) and the Greater Denton Arts Council (63 & 93: Generations in Conversation, Oct.-Dec. 2023), and she was recognized by the 2023 Viet Cultural Fest art competition, where she received First Place in the adult (19+ years old) age bracket for her painting Chân Dung Người Phụ Nữ Việt Nam II [Profile of a Young Vietnamese Woman II].