Her doctoral thesis was published in 1999, with the title Bearing Fruit in Due Season: Feminist Hermeneutics and the Bible in Worship.
[1] Smith earned a Bachelor of Divinity at the Trinity College Theological School in 1986, and was ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Church in Australia the following year.
From 1987 to 1989, she served as an assistant curate in St. Eanswythe Church in Altona, Victoria, in the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne.
She then served another two years as an assistant curate at St Stephen's Church in Mount Waverley, Victoria, from 1990 to 1991.
In an interview, she is quoted as saying that she tries "to be inclusive in [her] writing and preaching – of women, and of all the other people God loves but the church often overlooks or excludes.
"[3] Smith published her first collection, Praise the God of Grace, in 1990, while working as the assistant curate at St. Stephens Anglican Church.
Two other hymns are included in other collections: In 2018, she authored "Nothing Less than Love Has Saved Us"; written for the installation of Archbishop Kay Goldworthy[3] At the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours, Smith was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her contributions to liturgical scholarship and to the Anglican Church of Australia.