cgardner
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The problem is a perceptual one related to posing, exposure, and selection of background clothing and props.
The important thing to realize about lighting, in the holistic sense, is that light doesn't model shape or attract the eye, CONTRAST does. Highlights don't create contrast by themselves, its actually defined by the relative reflectance of everything in the photo and how the shadows define the shape of things.
It is contrast which "pulls" and "pushes" the eye around a photo. Where the eyes go is controlled by the brain and the brain reacts to contrast. It is a basic survival skill because on the primeval level if something moves or seems out of place it usually a threat. Contrast manifests itself many different ways in photo: tone, color, relative sharpness, relative size. So for a photo to work to attract the viewer to the face all the elements of contrast in the photo need to work together harmoniously and holistically to provide clues to their brain to attract them to the face.
For starters, the jet black background also isn't a good choice for a fair skinned lass in light clothing with white props. Perceptually its a bit like driving at night on a two-lane road and getting blinded by the headlights of an approaching car. The white of the chair and the bright pink dress overpower the contrast of the front of the face.
I've used various forms of perceptual "slight of hand" in the quick edit above to illustrate how contrast works. My first move was to make the background white, which eliminates the chair as a distaction. It now blends into the background harmoniously.
With a blond on white its actually color contrast of warm hair and skin against the neutral background which is the strongest form of attractive contrast. In that respect a pink dress is not an ideal choice, but little girls wear pink so what are ya' gonna do? Well on white DARKER pink will contrast more then lighter pink so we adjust the contrast (by feathering light when shooting) to make the pink dress lighter than the face so in relative terms the slightly darker (but normally exposed) face and hair contrast more on the white background. In other words on white you'd want to feather the lights opposite to the way you did on the dark background, vignetting LIGHTER towards the edges of the photo so the light-to-darker contrast pulling the eye up and into the face.
The first compositional / holistic lighting goal in a portrait is to get the viewer from the edges of the photo to the front of the face. The second goal is KEEP THEM THERE!!!
People when seeing a photo and recognizing a face it in it will react as they do to a stranger in person, try to make eye contact to "size them up". Again that is a basic survival reaction literally hard wired into our brains. So really the problem in a portrait isn't so much finding the face, but keeping the viewer from being distracted off of it once they find it.
Contrasting the head with the background helps the viewer's brain find the face in the photo. Then what you need to do is make the front of the face, specifically the eyes and mouth which are what the viewer will react to emotionally, hold their attention. That is again done with contrast. I use a shot of my wife to illustrate how the contrast dynamic works on a light background. The shot below was taken on a visit to a river side park. Since she was wearing white I needed a light background so the clothing wouldn't become a huge distraction. The sun reflecting off the water worked perfectly for that and also provided nice back rim lighting. The frontal lighting was a single 580ex flash on a bracket with a reflector.
Blurring it and making it more of an abstract tone/color pattern is a way to simulate how the brain reacts to the contrast pattern in the photo and how the shape of the face is defined.
The viewer gets pulled into the face in two stages, first by the contrast if the head to the background - in her case the dark hair and complexion - and then within the face the highlight pattern on the raised areas naturally model the shape of the face by defining a "mask" pattern the brain easily recognizes as a face. Patterns like that are why people swear they see religious figures in burnt toast and water stains on church walls. They are also what make portrait lighting strategies effective or not.
But it is important to realize a lighting pattern is defined with CONTRAST of highlight and shadow. On my wife's darker complexion I knew that the downward pattern of light from the diffuser on my flash bracket would define the mask with the highlights with the unlit sides of the face providing the framing contrast. A flash bracket provides centered "butteryfly" style lighting which is perfect for a full face view because it overlays a symmetrical pattern of highlight and shadow over a symmetrical pose.
Butterfly lighting on a fair skinned blonde subject like yours will also make the sides of the face darker than the front to create the same "mask" effect but the effect is very subtle unless the light is very close to the face. That is one of the reasons beauty dishes are commonly used in full face views. They can be placed very close to the head so the light falls off rapidly making the sides of the face quite dark relative to the normally exposed eyes. The disk over the flash tube creates a dead spot which when aimed at the closer forehead (which is closer to the light than the eyes) keeps it from getting overexposed: its a light with a built-in flag.
So all I did in the edit to make the eyes "brighter" is use a multiply adjustment level to make the sides of her face a bit darker. It makes the eyes and cheeks seem brighter by comparison, just as butterfly lighting used close would.
I mentioned earlier that contrast comes in many forms. Relative sharpness is an important contrast clue to the viewer what is important. Its why we spend $$$ for lenses with good Bokeh and use plain backgrounds for portraits: to provide a clue that the sharper stuff is more important. Sharpness says, "Go look at that, its important". I also mentioned that goal #2 is keeping the viewer on the face of a portrait once they get there. An effective perceptual technique to accomplish that is to selectively sharpen just the eyes and mouth of a portrait, then make everything softer by degrees the further away and less important it is than the face. That way when the viewer starts to wander off the face the unsharpness will send the sub-conscious clue to the brain "don't go there - nothing interesting there". The brain, being curious, will still cause the eye to wander, but if the face area has more contrast with the background in terms of both tone and sharpness it will become the natural "center of gravity" the viewer always is pulled back to naturally.
I intentionally exaggerated the blur in the edit so it would be noticed. If actually editing for best effect the blur should be just enough to clue the eye to move past that area, but not so much the blur seems contrived or artificial vs. what is seen by eye. The thing you need to realize about human vision and the use of blur in photos is that in real life we only sharply focus on the center 2-degrees of our field of view - an area roughly twice the size of your thumb held out at arm's length. That's why out of focus areas in photos provide the sub-conscious clue of relative importance. The photo is usually small enough to see most of it sharply, and the out of focus areas on the edges mimic how the eye would selectively focus on the wider FOV if seeing the same thing in person.
Here's another blurred example to illustrate the powerful attraction contrast can create with background, clothing and lighting pattern on the face all work together holistically to make the FRONT OF THE FACE the contrasting center of attention. The photo on the right is the same as above. The one on the left is an oblique view with a "short" lighting pattern, which is another very effective combination.
So you really aren't doing anything "wrong" you simply don't understand yet how to make all the elements of lighting in the holistic sense of where the light is aimed and what it reflects off of work together to guide the eye of the viewer to what is most important and keep them there.
In your case more light was needed on the background and foreground make the chair and clothing less distracting. Then on the face you simply needed to frame the front of the face with shadows on the sides to make the front of the face, eyes and mouth area seem brighter, in relative terms. Selective sharpening and vignettes towards the background tone can also be used to help guide the viewer to the face and keep them there. So all you really need to do is take the technical skills you have an put them into more of a holistic problem solving framework. Click the WWW button below and read the first tutorials in the concepts section and you'll understand what I mean if you don't already 
Chuck
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