Dude she posed nude for free.
"Melania was featured in a nude photo shoot for a 1997 issue of
Max, a French men's magazine, with another female model. The photos were shot by the photographer Alexandre Ale de Basseville, and the work was unpaid, instead promising Melania exposure in a prominent magazine. The photos were largely forgotten until they were published by the
New York Post in 2016."
It seems her biggest job was a cigarette ad.
And she only got because she was old(er).
She received her first major job when she posed for a
Camel cigarette ad shot by
Ellen von Unwerth, which was displayed as a
Times Square billboard and ran in
Rolling Stone. The opportunity was facilitated by a law that restricted cigarette ads to only depict people above the age of 25, excluding most aspiring models
She was not well known as a model in the 90ties.
The 90ties had some very famous models and she was not one of them.