Clara-Jumi Kang was born in Mannheim, Germany to Korean parents.[2] At age five, she began to take lessons from Valery Gradov at the Mannheim Musikhochschule (de).[3][4] When she was seven, she moved to the United States and received a full scholarship to the Juilliard School, studying with Dorothy Delay and Hyo Kang.[5] She later enrolled at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.[2]