[1] Honeywell earned a Juris Doctor in December 1981 from the Fredric G. Levin College of Law at the University of Florida.

[2] From November 1987 until June 1994, Honeywell served as an assistant city attorney for the City of Tampa and then spent six years at the Tampa law firm of Hill, Ward & Henderson, where she was a senior associate from 1995 until 1997 and then a partner from 1997 until December 2000.

In 1994, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles appointed Honeywell to be judge in Hillsborough County Circuit Court.

[3][4] She served from July 1, 1994 until December 31, 1994, but narrowly lost a bid for reelection in the fall of 1994 to attorney Frank Gomez.

[3][4] In 2000, Florida Governor Jeb Bush appointed Honeywell to a judicial post on the Thirteenth Circuit in Hillsborough County, which she held from January 2001 until becoming a federal judge in 2009.