Can't set font color of htmltext in a list field

[Ana Nelson]

I have text such as the following which I put into the htmltext of a 
list field:

<p><b>Mary Bloggs</b></p>
<p>Joe Bloggs></p>

This works fine, but I can't seem to change the color of the text.

I have tried:

<p><font  color="#FF0000">John Doe</font></p>

and several variations, none of which seem to produce any result. The 
"John Doe" is displayed, and if I make the line bold or italic that 
shows up correctly, but color (or any other font attribute) doesn't 
work. When I paste the lines of text into Dreamweaver they show the 
correct color.

I want to be able to set the colour of individual lines of text, not 
the entire block of text.