Barbara was born in Reichenstein, Silesia (now Poland) as the daughter of the mining entrepreneur and art collector Dr. Gerhart Güttler[2] (1889–1966) and his wife Clara (née Haselbach; 1897–1972).

During her stays in Asia, America, Australia and finally back in Europe, she worked and taught in the fields of nature conservation, primatology, anthropology, archaeology and art history.

There she started to work for the curator of the Sarawak State Museum, Tom Harrisson, "a romantic polymath, a drunken bully, an original-thinking iconoclast, a dreadful husband and father, [and] a fearless adventurer";[4][5] they married in 1956.

Tom and Barbara Harrisson worked on a broad spectrum of activities – among them conservation projects for sea turtles and orangutans[6] close to Bako National Park.

Their most important finding was on 7 February 1958, when Barbara Harrisson and colleagues discovered an inverted human skull while carefully digging in Hell Trench H/6, about 2.5 m below original ground surface.

Her PhD thesis on Heirloom Jars of Borneo under Stanley O'Connor, professor for South-east Asian art history, was started at this time and was finished in 1984.