This may be a dumb suggestion, but I'll make it anyway. I only recently just discovered that I can lift my front end much further into the air if I take the parking brake off. Most of the time when I'm trying to raise the front end, I'm parked, so the brake is on, you see. And when the front wheels try to go up, the rear wheels need to roll forward, which they can't do if the brake is on. The loader should really have enough strength to raise the front end up further than that. Could that be your issue?
Try lightly pressing the hydro pedal forward and it will come up real easy.