Rose Scott-Moncrieff joined the Biochemistry department at the University of Cambridge in 1925 and studied under Muriel Onslow (née Wheldale).

[2] In 1929 Scott-Moncrieff received a small grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which enabled her to begin work with JBS Haldane on the molecular biology of flower colour.

In the early period of their collaboration she was based in the laboratory of Professor Gowland Hopkins at the University of Cambridge where Haldane was a Reader.

Scott-Moncrieff's ability to bring together scientists of a more chemical background with those working on genetics was credited as a large aspect of her success.

[2] In the 1930s Rose Scott-Moncrieff and her colleagues published a number of seminal papers in the Biochemical Journal which determined the metabolic sequence and genetic basis of pigment biosynthesis in flowers.

[3] Having isolated anthocyanin from purple Antirrhinum majus[3] she now started work on its red variety and on the different strains of Primula sinensis.