There was no point to the daughter character

Overall I think the character of Kelly was put into this movie basically just for character development.
In the first film we learn that Ian Malcolm has kids but we never see them or really even find out anything about them. This movie tries to go a little deeper into Ian Malcolm's character development and shows how he behaves as a father and also provides a bit of back story into what happened between Ian and Kelly's mother (Ian mentions she took off to Paris).

So as a whole, Kelly is basically just there to build on Ian Malcolm's character profile.

There definitely was a point. Sarah speaks early on about the theory of Robert Burke who says that the trex would abandon its young at an early age, which she intends to disprove. The trex - infant relationship directly mirrors Malcolms relationship with his daughter, perhaps as a narrative tool, to show Ian's development as the importance of his daughter becomes a lot clearer as she's put into such a dangerous situation.

Funny I saw this movie back on opening weekend and no one complained about this character. They cheered for her actually.

Cut to many years later the internet won't stop whining about her. She was far less annoying than the first 2 kids. Funny how no one calls them pretentious when they were the very definition.

The elephant in the room is rather large and pretentious as well. You really can't skate around it.

I thought the girl was well played though and it gave Malcolm's character a different and more caring feel to the first film, which changed things up a bit.

Other than the fact that the kid was in the book (I think), Spielberg loves to put kids in peril in movies, to tug at the audience heartstrings. Although he does it so often it really feels like this is a personal fear of his. Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Empire Of The Sun, even A.I. (even though it's a robot child), and this one. Notice that he only alludes to a child being seriously injured, like the little girl in Lost World who is fine according to later report, although at first you think she was killed and eaten. His child serious injuries and deaths both occur in his later movies, BEFORE the film starts, like in The Minority Report or A.I., where the kid is in what seems to be a coma from a serious accident of sorts. My guess is that he has some dead fear of failing as a Dad and losing a child due to his own negligence.

There may be some child deaths in Jaws, but this was before he had children. He has even stated that he would change the ending to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind as he could never imagine abandoning his kids like that, since he became a father after that movie was made.

I remember someone pointing out that in every Jurassic movie there are kids whose parents are going through or been through a divorce. I don't remember if that was brought up in the first movie but in 2-4 they're pretty apparent. The theme of families coming together always shows up at the end of these movies.

She was there strictly for kid appeal.