I would not purchase anything for her that she cannot try in the water first. Fit on land may be fine. In the water she may hate it. Jackets have a tendency on some people to ride up on the surface. You see them all the time with the shoulders now up around their ears. Unless you add a crotch strap to them, which you can do on some.
Back inflates of any kind do not push people face forward in the water. Over inflating them, most often due to over weighting and poor placement of weights, is what usually results in that happening. Some BC's have trim weight pockets that allow you to distribute the weight so that it does not happen on the surface to the same degree.
However, when you use them to counteract that, they may make it harder to trim out underwater. That's because of the trim pockets being too low on the back to be of real use. If they put them up around the shoulders they'd be ok. But they put them over the kidneys where they are of little value to horizontal trim when coupled with a weight belt or integrated weights that are down around the hips.
Not sure why you are against the BPW but it is one of the best BC choices for women I have found. It fits every time as it's supposed to because you custom fit it to the diver, it puts the weight over the lungs where it needs to be, it's modular so it packs smaller, more economical due to that modularity, and the ability to just replace components that may wear out instead of the whole BC. You can customize the look with different color webbing, and when set up by someone who knows what they are doing feels like diving with nothing on.
I take customers who buy from me and want to come pick it up into the pool, adjust it, adjust their weights, get them trimmed out, and instruct them in the use of it. Not one has ever went back to a jacket. For women who are very slim, the crotch strap keeps it from riding up. For those with larger tops, it does not constrict or squeeze them. For those who are of larger overall build the whole thing is easier to adjust and fit to their shape.
With a jacket I have often seen too many compromises having to be made. The Zeagle Zena is nice in that it is also modular and you can swap out components. But it's 550 at leisure pro. A BPW is much less.
I always tell my students to buy their second BC first. That jacket is not going to hold it's value as well as a plate and wing either. Dive the jacket for a year, don't like it ? Replace the whole thing and hope you get 30% of what you paid for it. Decide you don't like the BPW? Get 75% or more of what you paid.
