Having your subject posed properly and having just the right amount of light in your scene and subjects will allow you to post process your RAW file to almost anything you want it to look like without the final picture looking "off".
I rarely look at the histogram. In fact, I don't remember the last that I looked into one while in the process of making the image. I just count on the "feel" of what I see on the camera's LCD, but a well balanced histogram for me should look like this:
This, for me represents a good exposure for post processing. Everything is well balanced and it will give me a very good headroom for post processing, meaning I will not easily blow-out my highlights when I push my exposure higher and my shadows will still retain some detail when I decide to turn the picture into black & white as you can see from the three photos below.
And lastly, looking for a proper place to position your subjects and choosing the time of day is very important for a good exposure if you want to use sunlight to light your scene and subjects.
The picture was taken under a bright afternoon sun but we didn't get harsh highlights and shadows on our subject's face. We did this by not having her pose under the bright sunlight but just a few paces away from it and just having the white wall bounce the sunlight for us.
Using a reflector would give some harsh highlights coming from unnatural angles but there is a way to mitigate this, all you have to do is remove the silver and gold reflective surfaces on the reflector and just use the bare white surface to reflect the sunlight to your subject or simply use a flash to do the job for you by aiming it at the white reflector. If you think that your bounced flash looks too harsh then just move the flash and the reflector further away from your model, this will also give you a softer light since the power of the light has dissipated.
Try this next time when you shoot your model under bright sunlight, you can use the harsh midday sun to your advantage when you know how to. Rick.