Mitzi Perdue only moved to New York City in the spring, but since that time, as befits an accomplished social hostess, 640 people have flocked to her apartment at 800 Fifth Ave. for charity fund-raisers and literary launches.

It’s not just the causes that have proved the attraction. Mrs. Perdue’s home contains a global trove of treasures, comprising European, Russian, and Chinese antiques. To attend Mrs. Perdue’s social occasions is akin to attending an antiques fair with a party to boot.

Yet her apartment imparts a spacious feel. “It’s deliberately not cluttered because the goal is charity entertaining,” Mrs. Perdue, 67, said, giving The New York Sun an exclusive tour (although the bedroom is still under construction) before heading to the Philippines, on an art vacation. Mrs. Perdue moved to Manhattan after selling the penthouse in Ocean City, Md., that she shared with her second husband, chicken magnate Frank Perdue, who died in 2005.

The apartment’s most striking ornament is a 19th-century gild wood harp crafted by Sebastian Erard, one of history’s finest harpsichord makers. Mrs. Perdue recounted how her father, Ernest Henderson, who co-founded the Sheraton Hotel chain and raised his family in Boston and Dublin, N.H., first bought the harp.

“In the 1950s, my father was the largest antiques buyer in the world. He initially started buying antiques for the family home, but got bit by the bug and would go around the auctions, not only Boston and New York, but also Paris and London, furnishing the Sheraton Presidential Suites and lobbies. He realized that antiques were worth more than top-of-the-line current furniture you get rid of 10 years later,” she said.

Mr. Henderson purchased the harp on the final day of a Newport mansion’s estate sale in 1953 during the middle of a thunderstorm. “Everybody just fled except my father,” Ms Perdue said. “The auctioneer faced an empty audience, except for my father, and he lumped the last three items together. They were a Steinway grand piano, a Gibson guitar and an Erard harp. The auctioneer said, ‘Am I offered $10,000?’ Silence. ‘$5,000?’ Silence. ‘$1,000?’ Silence. Do I hear any bid? My father raised his paddle and said, ‘one dollar.’ ‘Sold’. The gavel came down. That harp cost 33 cents.”

Another remarkable tale concerns the 16th century light wood Venetian desk with marquetry residing in Ms Perdue’s dining room which her mother bought in 1953 in a New Hampshire antique shop. “It belonged to a Medici cardinal,” she said. “Somehow it got sold. I was living in Spain and I came back horrified.” She traced the desk’s ownership to a young New York couple who, having made it the centerpiece of their home, were unlikely to relinquish it.

“But in the late 1970s when I was living in California, I would visit New York three times a year,” Ms Perdue said. “Usually I’d go to the Upper East Side but one day I got this urge to wander in the Upper West Side and saw a sign outside the Tepper Gallery which said ‘Auction Today’. They were selling that desk and I bought it back for about a third of what mother originally paid. I knew it was the same one because there was a watermark still there from flowers that I had put on the desk before I realized that you’re supposed to use coasters.”

Walk into the living room and two near-life-size Chinese Emperor and Empress sculptures, meticulously carved out of camel bone and holding prayer beads, complement the gold shell walls. “My son [Carlos Ayala] lived in Shanghai when he was managing Perdue Chicken’s venture in Shanghai, and he bought the statues,” she said.

Early Modern European portrait prints depicting Prussian and French queens hang on the walls of the dining room, accrued by her historian grandfather Ernest Flagg Henderson. Asked about the long-term future of her collection, Mrs. Perdue said: “I hope it stays in the family.”

There are exceptions, however. One is a series of 19th-century Russian imperial porcelain plates from the period of Alexander II, which she purchased from Sotheby’s, again with luck on her side. The auction was held on October 19, 1987, otherwise known as Black Monday, and she was the only bidder. Mrs. Perdue has not used the plates. “The idea of washing history? It’s not going to happen,” she said.

Mrs. Perdue prominently showcases her collection of “eggscapes,” her elaborately decorated eggs that have inspired a book and been exhibited at numerous locations, including the White House. She began decorating them after rupturing a disc in her back following a car accident in 1993. Her egg artwork subjects range from the four seasons to the Broadway musical “Beauty and the Beast.” “Frank Perdue was the chicken man and I thought it would be fun to have a hobby that would make me into the egg lady,” she said.