Florence Shyne Bowers grew up in Grambling, Louisiana. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Lincoln University in 1957 and later earned a Master of Science degree from The American University with a dual major in Molecular Biology and Immunology. 

 Her career in the life sciences began in 1963 as a Research Assistant in the Rheumatology Laboratory, Division of Rheumatic Diseases, Georgetown University Medical Center. There, she was involved in studies on hemolytic complement in the synovial fluid of patients with certain autoimmune diseases.  From 1966 to 1970, she was Research Assistant to a nephrologists-protein chemist at George Washington University Medical Center where she focused on the characterization of abnormal serum proteins found in patients with kidney disease. 

 In 1972 she went to work as a Research Assistant at Huntingdon Research Center, Brooklandville, Maryland, and in 1978 was appointed Manager of its Immunology Department. In this position she also served as Co-Investigator of a National Cancer Institute Contract for the development of diagnostic reagents to mammalian oncogenic RNA viruses. In 1988 she began work as a Research Biologist in the Laboratory of Immunogenetics, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. 

In the Laboratory of Immunogenetics, she joined a team of investigators who were attempting to establish an animal model in which to study the human T-cell leukemia virus, HTLV-1, a Type C retrovirus shown to be closely associated with human T-cell malignancies.  This team became one of the first to report the derivation of an infectious molecular clone of the HTLV-1 virus, providing an invaluable tool for researchers engaged in the study of viral gene functions.