Well, I can account for at least 2 female protagonist stories in which there is no "girl love." (One of them happening to be my own, the other happening to be the #1 on the rankings chart.)
Then again, the reason "girl love" is not a featured thing in those stories is because love/romance in general is not part of it and there doesn't seem to be a male-female relationship going on either. Or rather, any such potential relationship is so incredibly slow moving as to render its presence and promise in the story moot. Or rather, if there is some promise of it coming to that in the future, it's quite clear that's a deep burried sub-plot rather than what the story is actually about.
(Personally, I think a romance that is slow moving and deep DEEP in the under-current of the C-plot is one that speaks to the reader/viewer more. The relationship between Shinichi and Ran in Detective Conan is one of my favorites in all of fiction, and it only took about 1,000 chapters of the manga for them to finally become an official couple.)