I have a virtual machine with no X11 and wanted to use the Solarized color scheme in my CLI programs, so I replaced the default 16 colors this way:

  (.bashrc)

  if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then
      echo -en "\e]P0002b36"
      echo -en "\e]P1073642"
      echo -en "\e]P2586e75"
      echo -en "\e]P3657b83"
      echo -en "\e]P4839496"
      echo -en "\e]P593a1a1"
      echo -en "\e]P6eee8d5"
      echo -en "\e]P7fdf6e3"
      echo -en "\e]P8b58900"
      echo -en "\e]P9cb4b16"
      echo -en "\e]PAdc322f"
      echo -en "\e]PBd33682"
      echo -en "\e]PC6c71c4"
      echo -en "\e]PD268bd2"
      echo -en "\e]PE2aa198"
      echo -en "\e]PF859900"
      clear
  fi

I'm still shuffling them around, but it has worked pretty well. The nicest thing is that all my programs now support the color scheme.