Melania Trump's attorney, Charles Harder, said the reports contained several statements "that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation".

The lawsuit was filed against Mail Media, Inc, the publisher of the Daily Mail Online, and against Webster G Tarpley, the publisher of a weblog in Montgomery County, Maryland.

It relates to a story published by the Daily Mail Online last month which cited a Slovenian magazine's report that a modelling agency Mrs Trump worked with in New York in the 1990s also served as an escort business.

The agency reportedly linked wealthy clients with women for sexual services.

Mrs Trump notified the Daily Mail and other news organisations on August 22nd that she would take legal action in response to the story.

The Daily Mail retracted the story in a posting on its website yesterday evening.

"To the extent that anything in the Daily Mail's article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs Trump worked as an 'escort' or in the 'sex business' ... is hereby retracted, and the Daily Mail newspaper regrets any such misinterpretation."

The suit also alleges that Webster G Tarpley published "false and defamatory statements", including that Mrs Trump had suffered from "a full-blown nervous breakdown".

Mr Tarpley could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mrs Trump was born in Slovenia and moved to the United States in the 1990s.

She married the Republican presidential nominee in 2005.