NPC Face Replacers not Working... am I missing something?

[scorrp10]

Where is your Skyrim installed?  Where is Vortex staging folder?   Are they on the same physical drive partition?   Cause if not, Vortex will have problems hardlinking files.   What you can do:
In Vortex, go into Settings, click 'Mods' tab, and check what is your Mod staging folder.   Say, if you installed Skyrim on D drive, you can change your Mod staging folder to D:\Vortex\{GAME}\mods   

Assuming you installed 'Botox for Skyrim SE, when you click the dropdown arrow next to 'Remove' button for the mod,  and select 'open in File Manager'  it should open a folder listing the .esp and .bsa files that comprise the mod.    Or, if for whatever reason, you have to have them on separate drives, you can change deployment method from Hardlink to Move deployment.

Then, if you actually go into the directory where SSE is installed (typically, C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition)  and into Data, those same Botox .esp and .bsa files should be there.   If they are not, something went wrong with Vortex file deployment.

Now, one curious thing:   the way you describe it with Botox:   "black face and no visual improvement".   Thing with Botox - its replacement head meshes in the .bsa are designed to work with VANILLA NPC records.    That is, its .esp are header-only.   If you are getting black faces on NPCs with Botox, it means SOME mod is altering their records, changing their head part lists.