[2] She began her career as a writer for multiple television shows in the 1990s, including the anthology series CBS Schoolbreak Special, for which she was nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards.

Prince-Bythewood made her feature film directorial debut with Love & Basketball (2000), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award.

[9][10] After five years working in TV as a writer on shows like A Different World and South Central, Prince-Bythewood wrote her first film, 2000's Love & Basketball.

[19] Prince-Bythewood also stated that the movie is filled with intense personal issues with some resulting from her own adoption and her fraught encounter with her birth mother.

[23] Other collaborators were choreographer Laurieann Gibson (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj), hairstylist Kimberly Kimble (Beyoncé), and record producer The-Dream.

"[31] Prince-Bythewood directed the TriStar Pictures epic The Woman King, a feature inspired by true events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Woman King tells the story of Nanisca (Viola Davis), general of the all-female military unit known as the Agojie, and her daughter, Nawi, who together fought the Portuguese and neighboring tribes who violated their honor, enslaved their people and threatened to destroy everything they’ve lived for.

Working alongside Director Jeffrey W. Byrd, Prince-Bythewood will be addressing needs of the African American members of the Guild such as job creation and career advancement in this new position.

Along with friends Mara Brock Akil, Sara Finney-Johnson and Felicia D. Henderson, Prince-Bythewood endows The Four Sisters Scholarship.

[37] Furthermore, Prince-Bythewood’s films work to resist negative conceptions and ideologies about the ability of women to be dynamic; people who are both successful in their professional pursuits and in their maintenance of romantic relationships.

[37] This element of Prince-Bythewood’s work - one that challenges expectations in arenas of society that refuse women’s (particularly black women's) ability to solidify their own subjectivity through passionate and purposeful vocational pursuits while also being desired romantically - has led some to label her work as romance films, in what some consider an oversimplification and dismissal of underlying womanist narratives and themes.

[38] According to Christina N. Baker, Prince-Bythewood forefronts the humanistic quality of her film’s characters through the development of narratives that demonstrate the complexities of human emotion.

In producing narratives that highlight the intricacies of feeling, thought, and behavior, Prince-Bythewood works to dispel limiting images and representations of women that regard them as objects of desire and self-sacrifice whose purpose is centralized around being in service of others, who are often men, around them.