She earned her bachelor's degree in biology from Central College in 1980 and graduated summa cum laude.

[3] She was then promoted in full professor in the Department of Botany and School of Biological Sciences in 1998.

[3] Soltis' research has focused on the patterns and processes that generated the tree of life.

She uses genomic methods, natural history collections and computational modeling to understand the phylogeny, phylogeography, and polyploidy of angiosperms.

[7] She was the winner of the 2002 Dahlgren Prize in Botany from the Royal Physiographic Society of Sweden.