Screenshots of what you're seeing/doing would help immensely. One of yo ulooking at the "%appdata%\Strive" folder, and maybe the contents of the mods folder. Plus maybe one of the game with the mods panel open.
The game can trivially find this folder, it asks windows where the user's app data folder is, windows tells it, it then looks in the Strive sub folder. Doesn't matter where the game's exe is. You might have modified the folder it uses for the mod or portraits. In which case it might be looking somewhere else. We've been working off what the default folders are, but they can be changed.