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Permission to use photos: You will definitely have to get written permission from the photographer in order to use her photos as reference for portraits. If she works for an established photo "studio" as you describe, she personally may not own the copyright for her images and probably takes photos on a "work for hire" basis, in which case the copyright for her images is owned by her employer. You would need to get written permission from the relevant people at the photo studio. This may be very difficult and perhaps not possible at all.
A better bet would be to learn to become a terrific photographer yourself and try and avoid situations like this in future where a client wants to bring in another photographer. A great deal of the creativity in portraiture is in the posing and lighting. By copying someone else's photos you're losing all of that. It's really not your own work of art at that point.
Pricing: I don't discount for multiple subjects on one canvas, personally, and I know of a lot of other artists who do the same. I feel it's actually more difficult than doing two portraits separately. Some artists discount anywhere from 10% to 50%. There doesn't seem to be a standard formula out there.
Most artists include shoulders and some clothing in their standard "head and shoulders" pricing. You should probably establish a price for that format that you feel comfortable with and stick with it, regardless how much of the torso is shown.
Hope that helps,
I deleted the winking smile for you.!
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