Many of home-grown singer Kit Chan's fans probably got to know her through the hit ballad Heartache. She was a young woman of 22, but her voice had a distinctively rich timbre and she had the range to shoot for the high notes in the title hit of her 1994 album.

Overnight, she became a star. It broke her into the highly competitive Taiwanese music scene and sold an impressive 150,000 copies in Taiwan along the way.

Except it did not happen overnight. The record Heartache was a reworked and repackaged version of Do Not Destroy The Harmony, which was released in Singapore and Malaysia in 1993.

That makes this year the 25th anniversary of the debut of the versatile entertainer, who sings in Mandarin, Cantonese and English and is also known for her work in theatre productions such as Forbidden City: Portrait Of An Empress. Her plans to mark this milestone include a new album and a series of live performances.

Looking relaxed in a casual white-shirt-and-jeans combination and sporting mint-green nails, Chan, 45, tells The Straits Times in an exclusive interview over a leisurely tea at Relish restaurant in Cluny Court that the journey had started much earlier.

She had always been drawn to singing and dancing and had taken part in such events since primary school. Raffles Girls' School further honed that interest with a culture that placed an emphasis on performance. She was a choir member and headlined annual musical productions such as The Sound Of Music. "You got a taste of what it's like to be an amateur performer. You knew the discipline, you knew the teamwork."

By the time she was studying at Raffles Junior College, her mind was made up - she would make a profession of singing and performing. But even her schoolmates had their doubts. Putting on a high-pitched voice, she parrots: "Har, how are you going to make a living? You're going to starve."

Their scepticism failed to sway her.

"When I make up my mind about something, it's like this anchor that gets lodged in the seabed and no one can change that."

Her confidence was bolstered when music producer Billy Koh from local label Ocean Butterflies spotted her at age 17, when she sang during a songwriting competition. She was soon getting pay cheques as a studio singer to do jingles and cover versions and she thought: "Hey, you could be a professional."

And it was Koh who produced Do Not Destroy The Harmony.

Chan recalls: "He knows what I sound like, but he has to push the limits. Moreover, I hardly sang Chinese songs then, I was singing mainly English songs. Not only are you trying to find your own voice, you have to find it in another language."

Before recording, they would go over the lyrics and work on her diction. She admits: "My reading was very stilted and even my singing. Sometimes, when I listen to my old recordings, I cringe because it was still like a foreign language."

It took 21/2 years to make that first album.

And it took another nine months for Koh to take it to Taiwan. While the title track was new, six of the 10 songs on the album Heartache were taken off Do Not Destroy The Harmony.

During that time, a bored Chan hung out with a fellow Singaporean musician friend, Case Wu, and they stretched their dollar by coming up with ideas that were both entertaining and cheap. They would, for example, pack lunch and then head to the beach and read.

All the while, Koh kept reassuring her, "anytime, it's going to happen".

And suddenly, it did.

"It's a mixture of science and art and luck. You can try and engineer something, but, sometimes, it doesn't work. Fortunately for all of us, it worked."

She was quickly sucked into a whirlwind of non-stop promotional activities.

"It's about stamina of the body and the mind. They wear you down, physically, mentally, and you have to appear high. That very quickly wore me down.

"I was doing what I wanted to do, but it sapped all my energy. By the time I did my third album, Sadness (in 1996), I was already entertaining thoughts of retiring," she says, making air quote marks around that last word.

Ironically, she thinks she is much chirpier now, compared with when she had to be chipper on command.

"I'm an introvert. But with age, experience and confidence, you learn to overcome that. There's a button you can press, but, back then, I couldn't."

Perhaps because of all the stress she associates with flogging the releases, when asked what has stood out for her in her career, she sidesteps her albums and points to the beloved 1998 National Day Parade song Home and the musicals Snow.Wolf.Lake (first staged in 1997) and Forbidden City: Portrait Of An Empress (first staged in 2002). "They have come to define Kit Chan as an artist and they also differentiated me from other Chinese pop artists. It's a pure blessing. Sometimes, maybe you have the ability to do certain things, but you're not given the opportunity."

She almost missed out on the rare chance to do the Cantonese musical Snow.Wolf.Lake as she was tired out from promoting her fourth Taiwanese album, Don't Let Me Hate You (1996). She eventually agreed to do the audition, flying to Hong Kong to meet Cantopop superstar and the creator of the musical, Jacky Cheung.

"I'd never met him before and Jacky looked very fierce and black-faced."

Within a week, she heard back. She was famously offered a choice of characters as she was the first actress cast - and she picked the second lead.

"Worldly wisdom dictates that you pick No. 1 rather than No. 2, but that's not true. It depends on what works for you."

Her instinct proved right as Wait And Wait, sung by her character, became a Cantopop hit for her.

Despite her years in the limelight, she has managed to keep her private life largely under wraps.

Even as a young artist, she says: "I was extremely clear about privacy. Whether it's happy or unhappy things, I think it's my own business. I do not like to be fodder for (the idle chatter of ) people."

Her disdain for rumour-mongering came from her family.

"My parents are such role models, they're really very cool leh. They grew up in the generation of baat por (Cantonese for busybodies), but they never gossiped about our relatives. You kind of monkey see monkey do, right?"

She is the third of four daughters of a Cantonese family and her parents used to own a provision shop in Chinatown, which, unknown to many, was featured in the music video for Home.

Chan was once startled by a Taiwanese radio DJ, who asked in a quickfire question-and-answer game if she had a foreigner boyfriend - she was dating an American then. She declined to answer, thus forfeiting the chance to have her song aired. Her principled stance impressed the DJ, who decided to play her song anyway.

Even when she tied the knot with her long-time Singaporean banker boyfriend in 2012, she did not release a statement. They have no children.

Asked about things on the personal front, she reveals: "I'm single now. It happened last year. I kept it to myself for a long time and only a few very close friends know - even my family knew about it only much later."

On the break-up, she would only say: "I'm someone who has always been very independent, mentally and emotionally. I always need to work it out myself first. Only when I'm very clear, then I might be open to listening to your opinion. But anyway, it doesn't really matter, a relationship is between two people."

So what made her decide to share this piece of decidedly personal information now?

"It's very simple. I want to stop answering stupid questions about 'So how did you spend your Valentine's Day?' I don't want to have to pretend, so it's just good to get it out there."

What got her through the "very difficult" period was being "blessed with good friends and my faith".

It helped that she was kept busy as well, with a starring role in the Toggle Web series Patisserie Fighting and a reprisal of the role of Empress Dowager Cixi in Forbidden City.

"If not for the work, I think it would have been very jialat (Hokkien for dire). Work demands my focus and I give it willingly and happily."

It seems the split has not soured or hardened her.

She says: "I have this feeling I'm entering a new phase in my life in every respect. I think it's positive."

This year, she will have a new album out - possibly by April - and there are also plans for a string of gigs as the record "lends itself to being performed live extremely well". She proudly adds that it is an "all-Singaporean effort", from the session musicians involved to the recording locale.

"It seems like I have waited 25 years to do this album. We couldn't have done this any earlier," she says. "I'm really glad I lasted so long. Along the way, I took this very long break - I'm glad I took the break, I'm glad I came back."

She put her pop singer career on hold in 2004 and worked as a public relations consultant. She made her comeback in 2011 with the album Re-interpreting Kit Chan.

At one point, she says almost wistfully about her nine months of waiting in 1994: "When I look back, those were really happy days.

"I constantly try to examine my perspectives and my needs and desires and I realise I've come a long way from those days, but I am not happier or sadder than then. Which is why I'm very convinced that money and achievements do not buy you happiness. It's good to remember that."

What also seems to be clear is that singing is one thing that does bring her joy.

"God willing, if I'm still vocally able and physically able, I can see myself singing at 60. I can, yeah."