In her relatively short career, she specialised in the taxonomy of the family Thelotremataceae, in which she helped describe many new species.
Born in Bangkok on 27 May 1957 to parents Sueb and Lamyai, Natsurang Homchantara was the fourth of five children.
Starting in 1991, she began working at Bangkok's Ramkhamhaeng University as an instructor in the biology department.
She enrolled in Liverpool John Moores University as a PhD student, with Anthony Whalley and Brian John Coppins as supervisors; after working with Coppins at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, she earned her PhD in 1999.
As part of her thesis work, she and Coppins formally described 30 new lichen species from the family Thelotremataceae.