Born in 1969, Chihoko Kawada began her musical studies by learning the violin. She enrolled at the Paris National Conservatoire of Music and Dance to study the violin, but soon switched to the viola.

She was unanimously awarded First Prize in the class of Jean Sulem and Davia Binder, and then spent five months at the Mozart Academy in Prague in 1994.

She joined the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996, and then the Orchestre de Paris in 2000.