Lucid was born in China as the daughter of Baptist missionaries and with her family spent several months in a Japanese prison camp near Shanghai during World War II. She received bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees from the University of Oklahoma; the Ph.D. was in biochemistry. She worked with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City until her 1978 selection as one of the first set of astronaut candidates to train for flights aboard the space shuttle.

Lucid first flew aboard the space shuttle in 1985 on a mission that deployed three communication satellites. She flew on three more space shuttle missions in 1989, 1991, and 1993, and then in 1996 rode the shuttle to the Russian space station Mir, where she spent 188 days, which was then a record for the longest-duration spaceflight by any U.S. astronaut. In all, Lucid spent a total of 223 days in space, then a record for most time in space by a woman.

In 2002 Lucid was named chief scientist of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with responsibility for overseeing the scientific quality of all NASA programs and for external communication of NASA's research objectives. She held that position until 2003, when she returned to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.