my advise is first to look at the real world, and second to consult a book on photography. Or three: lighting for fashoin & glamour, lighting for bridal shots and lighting for indoor & outdoor portraying.

Outdoor => skydome
Sun => infinite light (one only)
Light bulb = point light (one per actual bulb), soft shadows mostly
Studio light = spotlight (one to one again)
Camera flash = ditto (high intensity, hard shadows)
Softboxes etc = buy the recently launched studio / car pation set from Dreamland / Bagginsbill

enable IDL. use Gamma correction (see my Missing Manuals site for a tutorial on this)

Do not put lights where there are not placed in real life. Do not use IBL nor ambient occlusion, as these are means to overcome the problems in P7 which are all dealt with in PPro2012. Do not use ambient (in materials) unless you're presenting glowing led lights and other things that actually do illuminate (like softboxes in BB's studio set, and the skydome).

Portraying a girl outdoors just requires a skydome / IDL, one (!) infinite light and one or two spotlights for flash. Period. In my opinion.

EDIT: Env Spheres do fine with HDR, there is a current thread by Monkeycloud who makes Vue scenes for that.

have fun, looking forward to your results.

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though