 Chen earned a bachelor's degree in statistics from Chongqing University in China in 1985, and became a lecturer at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics from 1985 to 1988.She returned to graduate school for a master's degree from the University of Akron in 1990, and a Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University in 1995, under the supervision of Arjun Kumar Gupta.She joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City in 1995, and was department chair from 2008 until 2014, when she moved to Georgia.