After graduating, Owens held a postdoctoral position at the NIH, first at the then-called National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolic, and Digestive Diseases in the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Metabolism and then in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in the in the Section on Developmental Pharmacology in the Laboratory of Biomedical Sciences.[1] During this time, she focused on how drugs are chemically processed in the body.[9] In 1975, Owens began to lead her own independent research group at NIH NICHD within the Section on Drug Biotransformation, which later became the Section on Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism.[4] She was the first African American investigator at NIH.[10] Starting in 1988, Owens has directed NICHD's Section on Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism in the Program on Developmental Endocrinology and Genetics.[4][9]