Truth be told, I always assumed that was her real face. It looks that way, too.
The whole "just walking armour, no Eldar inside" thing is not really backed up in any way by the current codex. The way the codex makes it sound like is that an Exarch puts on the Phoenix Lord's armour and then his own consciousness is overwritten with that of the Phoenix Lord, but the body stays the same; if the body is slain, some other Eldar must don the armour.
Taking a particularly ugly mask would kinda defeat the purpose of using a better model.