Barbara was born in Namibia in 1953 but spent her childhood in the Transvaal and Cape Peninsula. She matriculated in 1971 from Bellville High School and thereafter obtained a B.Sc. from the University of Stellenbosch majoring in Biochemistry and Zoology. In 1975 she completed an Honours degree in Biochemistry and in 1976 a Masters degree, working on the tertiary and quaternary structure of thyroglobulin. She did this as a research assistant in the Pharmacology Department of the Medical School of the University of Stellenbosch.

In 1979 Barbara married Evard and interrupted her professional career to raise two children, Dalene (born in 1981) and Johan (1985) to school-going age. She returned to Medical research in 1989 as a part-time assistant to Prof. Amanda Lochner in the Department of Medical Physiology and Biochemistry of the Medical School of the University of Stellenbosch. To bring herself up to date in her field, she completed an Honours degree in Pharmacology in 1991 and obtained a Ph.D. in 1993 (Thesis title : The identification, localization and characterization of receptor sites specific for inositol-phosphate in the myocardium). She continued her work in this field up to the end of 1995, after which she changed her field of study to the diabetic myocardium.

Currently, Barbara uses rat models of diet induced obesity to study both physiological and biochemical changes that occur in the heart. Her main focus in these studies is to understand how the heart becomes insulin resistant, a condition that renders the organ incapable of functioning properly. Animal models are therefore used to mimic changes seen in humans in obesity, the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, all situations associated with high cardiovascular mortality. In her studies, she also investigates the effects of different drugs available on the market to treat type 2 diabetes, on the heart.

She is currently part of the MRC Heart Centre at Tygerberg.

Barbara was elected as Secretary/Treasurer of the Physiology Society of Southern Africa for a 3 year term in 2001, and in 2006 she was promoted to ad hominem Extraordinary Associate Professor in Medical Physiology. She is also chairperson of the committee for the use of animals in research at Tygerberg from 2005-present, as well as member of the equivalent committee (ECRA) at the MRC.