[3] However, she is best known for her role as publisher, editor and writer for the influential building industry trade journals established in 1907 with her husband George, which she ran and expanded after his death in 1928 until her retirement in 1961.

[4] Taylor was born at Bedminster, in Somerset (now a part of Bristol), England to John Parsons and Eliza (née Brooks), working-class parents who described themselves as "stone quarryman" and "washerwoman" in the British census of 1881.

[2] According to her official although unpublished biography by Kerwin Maegraith, Taylor attended a nearby public school where she says she received a "good education".

She eventually found a position as a clerk in the Parramatta architectural practice of Francis Ernest Stowe,[6] an acquaintance of her father's.

[7] Inspired by the example of draftspeople in the same office who were earning far more than herself, she enrolled in night classes at the Sydney Technical College where she became the first woman to complete final year studies in architecture in 1904.

Soon after completing her articles, she went on to work in the busy and prestigious office of John Burcham Clamp, where she claimed she was made chief draftsperson.

On 5 December 1909, Taylor became the first Australian woman to fly a heavier-than-air craft, in a glider built by her husband in his Redfern workshop,[12] from the Narrabeen sandhills near Sydney.

[2] According to garden historian Richard Aitken, 'Gardening, although not expressly covered by Building, was treated nonetheless as an integral part of design, both at a domestic level and on a broader public scale'.

[6][12] Following her husband's sudden death, drowning in his bath associated with an epileptic seizure in 1928,[16] Taylor maintained their publishing business and while forced to close eight of their eleven journals, she maintained Building (later Building, Lighting and Engineering) (1907–72), Construction (1908–74) and the Australasian Engineer (1915–73), editing them herself[2] and expanding significantly after World War II.

Also in 1907 she provided a perspective drawing for the winning competition entry for the Commercial Traveller's Building in Sydney (which was demolished to make way for the MLC Centre in the 1970s).

Other ideas have proved unpopular or incorrect, such as her desire to demolish Hyde Park Barracks or build heliports in the CBD and her contention that the Sydney Opera House would be a white elephant.

The biography Florence Taylor's Hats: Designing, Building and Editing Sydney by Bronwyn Hanna and Robert Freestone was published in 2008 by Halstead Press ISBN 9781920831363.