Andrea Ruth Waldeck, 43, was arrested in April after authorities found 1,472 grams (52 ounces) of crystal methamphetamine in her underwear at her hotel room in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province.
Prosecutor Deddy Agus Oktavianto said police had followed Waldeck out of Surabaya's international airport after receiving a tip that she was carrying the drugs.
The trial started Monday at Surabaya's district court. Waldeck, a teacher from Rustington, West Sussex, could face a firing squad if found guilty, Oktavianto said.
Waldeck told authorities that her boyfriend, who lives in China, had ordered her to bring the drugs to a man in Indonesia in exchange for £3,1000, the prosecutor said.
She is expected to give a statement in the next court hearing on Monday.
Foreigners are regularly charged with drugs offences in Indonesia, which has some of the world's toughest anti-narcotics laws, but most are caught in Bali.
Last month, Indonesia's Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a British woman convicted of smuggling £1.6 million worth of cocaine into the resort island of Bali.
Lindsay Sandiford, 57, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire was arrested in May last year after the drug was found during a routine check of her suitcase as she arrived on a flight into the holiday island of Bali. She had come in from Bangkok in Thailand, and was accused by police of being at the centre of a drug ring involving three other Britons.
She now has two more chances to get the death sentence overturned - a judicial review of the Supreme Court's decision or a presidential pardon.
But death row convicts in Indonesia rarely manage to get their sentences lifted. Most spend years in jail before being taken to an isolated location at night and executed by firing squad.
Indonesia has very strict drug laws. More than 140 people are on death row for drug crimes, a third of them foreigners.
Source: The Telegraph, September 25, 2013
