Higgs earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master's degree from the Somerville College, Oxford in 1989 before receiving her PhD in psychology from Durham University.
In 2002, she published Memory for recent eating and its influence on subsequent food intake, which found that when participants were reminded of when they previously ate they were less likely to overeat.
[6] Due to the impact she had on her field, Higgs was appointed President-Elect of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.
[7] Following this, she was the co-recipient of a £800,000 project grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to explore how the pleasure of eating is affected by cognitive functions.
[8] In 2017, Higgs collaborated with Jeff Brunstrom and Lenny Vartanian to explore how eating with other people affects appetite using funding from a ESRC grant.