If you're copying a head mesh over into your custom race's folder, make sure you also copy the EGM, EGT and TRI files that go with it (have the same name minus the suffix). EGM is needed for the mesh to be reshapable during CharGen, EGT contains skin tint, coloration and facial hair information for the respective sliders to have any effect, and TRI is for the facial animations. If any of these are missing, things will not work. If you rename your head mesh, you also have to rename those files.
If you, however, altered the head mesh in a modelling app, it is very likely you simply destroyed their functioning. A single little change in vertex order (happens on import, export and simple scripted tasks) or count and the EGM, EGT and TRI files will no longer match the head mesh and cease to work or cause yet more terrible issues.
Let's say the vertices in your head mesh all have a number, counting from 0 up to N. Then there is information in the TRI file stating for "blink left" to morph the position of vertices 20 to 140 (all vertices of the left eye lid) between neutral position and fully closed position (stored as offsets in the file) to create the blinking motion. If now the order or count of the vertices is changed, vertices 20 to 140 will no longer be the left eye lid but anything else, randomly located over the whole mesh, and applying this morph will only distort your mesh but not move the eye lid anymore.
That's why altering head meshes is such a complex and difficult task.