Lin Wei was born in Guangzhou in 1964. She grew up in Beijing, where her parents were both professors at the Central Conservatory of Music. She began studying the violin with her father, Professor Lin Yao-Ji at the age of seven, and the piano with her mother, Professor Hu Shi-Xi at the age of eight. She commenced her formal music training at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing where she continued studying the violin with Lin Yao-Ji.
In 1985, she received a scholarship from the City of London to study with Professor Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London under the solo advanced study course, where she completed her studies in 1988.
Lin Wei has been a member of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra since 1988. During extended leaves of absence from the Iceland Symphony, she has served as concertmaster of the Hong Kong Pan Asia Symphony Orchestra and played with Baltimore Symphony and Washington Chamber Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. She has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and various ensembles in Europe, the United States and Asia.
Lin Wei has been a violin teacher at the Reykjavik College of Music, the Purcell School of Music in London and the Yip Academy in Hong Kong. She was her father’s teaching assistant intermittently from 1996-2008. She has taught at the Reykjavik College of Music since 1990. She has taught and given master classes in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, United States and China. Lin Wei was invited to give a talk about her late father Prof. Lin Yao Ji’smusic life and his teaching concept in the Royal Academy of Music in London during the Menuhin Competition in 2016.
Lin Wei is the founder and Chairman of the Lin Yao-Ji Music Foundation of China, a non- profit organization registered in Hong Kong (LYJMFC). She also founded and chairs the Harpa International Music Academy in Iceland. In this capacity she has organized master classes and concerts at the National Centre for the Performing Arts Beijing, Hong Kong Cultural Centre and Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre with internationally renowned musicians and rising young stars.
As the Chairman of LYJMFC, she also collaborated with the Menuhin International Violin Competition Beijing 2012 and China International Violin Competition.