Thanks for the replies folks.

PJZ and Chinnei: I have tried making the zone huge and moving the magnet all over the place, not a molecule of movement from the hair figure.

Amacord: How do I make the figure a prop? Won't it lose the bone information for the braids?

Chinnei: I've never really used the Setup room, probably farther than I want to go right now.

FYI, I started up a fresh session, loaded the hair figure only, and the magnet still won't affect it, trying all the things I've tried so far.

I'm  trying Chinnei's suggestin of importing the obj, applying the magnet, and then exporting as a morph target to see if that works.