With Barcelona pushing for a winning goal Torres latched on to a long clearance and raced through to round Victor Valdes and send Chelsea into the Munich showpiece on 19 May.
The game burst into life in the last 10 minutes of the first half when Barca finally made the breakthrough as Dani Alves controlled a Chelsea clearance and passed to Isaac Cuenca, who squared the ball across the six-yard line for Sergio Busquets to clip into the net.
Two minutes later Chelsea, who had earlier lost Gary Cahill with an hamstring injury, suffered another setback when John Terry inexplicably kneed Alexis in the back in an off the ball incident and was rightly given a straight red card.
Barca took the lead for the first time in the tie as Alexis laid the ball off to Lionel Messi and he threaded a pass through for Andrea Iniesta, who slotted into corner from 10 yards.
But Chelsea turned the tie back in their favour in injury-time as Frank Lampard turned a defence splitting pass in front of Ramires and he kept his composure to superbly chip the advancing Victor Valdes.
Messi then crashed his penalty off the crossbar after Cesc Fabregas had gone down in a challenge from Didier Drogba just after the break.
Alexis headed narrowly wide of the post from eight yards and Cech advanced to block Cuenca's shot from a similar distance before Messi smacked a low drive off the post six minutes from time.
Branislav Ivanovic sent a free header wide from a Lampard corner and Solomon Kalou hesitated when clean through, but Torres (90) would take his chance when it arrived.
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