Dr. Jinni Shen is a twenty-eight-year-old soprano from Nanjing, China. She began her musical journey at the age of five with her first music lesson. Shen developed her vocal technique and music skills at the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in 2018. Later that year, she moved to the United States to pursue a Master’s Degree in Voice Performance at The Mannes School of Music at The New School in NYC.

In the spring and summer of 2019, Shen participated in Mannes Opera’s production of Street Scene by Kurt Weill, the International Vocal Arts Institute (IVAI), and the Savannah Voice Festival. That same year, she was a studio artist with Pittsburgh Festival Opera, where she performed the role of Min in the new opera The Night Flight of Minerva's Owl and covered the role of Xanthe in Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae.

Despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, Shen’s passion for performance led her and her colleagues to hold a series of recitals entitled "Art Songs of the World" across venues in Connecticut and Massachusetts. In 2021, Shen joined the Doctor of Musical Arts program in Opera Performance at The Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin and became a member of the Butler Opera Center.

Over the 2022-2025 seasons, Shen portrayed several principal roles in the Butler Opera Center major productions, including Micaëla in Carmen, “Ma” Zegner in Proving Up, Giulietta in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Musetta in La Bohème, Lisa in The Queen of Spades, and Rosina in The Ghosts of Versailles. Additionally, she played the role of Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus at FAVA Opera. She also served as an apprentice and outreach artist with OPERA San Antonio's Young Artist Program during the season of 2022, and successfully earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the spring of 2024.