Owens flunked out of his eighth grade year at Walnut Hills High School due to repeated absences while working odd jobs and caring for his siblings.

In 1963, the elder Owens moved the family to Detroit, due to the difficulty of raising seven children while unemployed.

[6][9][10][11] Owens graduated from Woodward High School and went on to attend Antioch College in Yellow Springs.

He earned a medical degree and Master of Public Health from the Yale School of Medicine.

As Cincinnati's first reproductive endocrinologist, he performed the city's first in vitro fertilization and, in 1986, its first pregnancy from a frozen embryo.

In 2006, he campaigned with Prosecuting Attorney Joe Deters and Sheriff Simon L. Leis Jr. in support of a tax levy to fund a new county jail, a measure that was controversial among Black voters.

[14][2] During his terms in office, he gave a thousand talks to local leaders about social equity and 180 talks to local students about life choices, arguing that an increased high school graduation rate would lead to a decreased homicide rate.

[7] He also sat on a number of other boards, including those of U.S. Bancorp, the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden's Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife.

[21] Owens is featured in a mural by Nadyaa Betts on the side of WCET's Crosley Telecommunications Center, in appreciation of his support for the station's annual Action Auction.