[1] Higgins authored Our Native Cacti (1931), and other popular works on plants of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

[5] During her career as a photographer, Higgins produced a series of 300 plant portraits, taking up the study of botany to properly identify her subjects.

[7] In 1931, Higgins authored Our Native Cacti; she joined the staff of the San Diego Natural History Museum in 1933, becoming curator of botany in 1943 upon the retirement of Frank Gander.

Higgins's surveys have been updated, first in 1986 by R. Mitchel Beauchamp's A Flora of San Diego County, California and more recently by Jon P. Rebman and Michael G. Simpson's Checklist of the Vascular Plants of San Diego County (2014, 5th ed.

She wrote a series of interpretative guides to southern Californian plants and trees and continued collecting specimens in Baja California, Mexico, into her mid-90s.