Beautiful female lacking expression (3)
I believe the answer is:
air
'expression' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'beautiful female lacking' is the wordplay.
'beautiful' becomes 'fair' ('fair' can be similar in meaning to 'beautiful').
'female' becomes 'f' (abbreviation).
'lacking' indicates named letters should be taken away.
'fair' with 'f' taken away is 'AIR'.
(Other definitions for air that I've seen before include "Display" , "Musical composition" , "Skye Boat Song, perhaps" , "Light wind; song" , "Substance breathed in" .)