[1] Barbara Rye has been associated with the Western Australian Herbarium, where her work as a taxonomist has been the source of many new descriptions of plants.
The number of taxa recorded as described by women authors is historically very low, of the terrestrial plant species this amount is around three percent,[2] yet in analysis published in 2019 Rye is amongst the ten most prolific women taxonomists.
Barbara Rye entered the fields of zoology and botany, taking a special interest in genetics and evolutionary biology.
The first description of a new species was a Darwinia, a genus of the family Myrtaceae that Rye investigated for her doctoral thesis, separating Darwinia capitellata from a more widely distributed group.
By early 2019, Barbara Rye was the acknowledged author of over two hundred and thirty new species.