I had lunch with the Queen

Charlotte di Vita has been shot at in a squatter camp in South Africa and held at knifepoint and car-jacked in Brazil, so meeting the Queen at Buckingham Palace should have been a breeze.

"Actually, it was terrifying," says the 37-year-old charity founder, one of the 180 women invited to yesterday's Palace lunch to "celebrate female excellence". With guests such as Cherie Booth, Heather Mills McCartney, JK Rowling, Sam Taylor-Wood, Vivienne Westwood and Baroness Thatcher, it was a networker's dream and with Kate Moss and Zadie Smith bound to look amazing, what would she wear?

"Donna Karan is involved in the charity so she said she'd lend me a dress, which was a relief because otherwise I would have spent ages agonising over what to wear. I woke up yesterday morning and suddenly remembered I had to go to the Palace. When I arrived, one woman asked me who had done my make-up and I just looked at her in confusion. I spend half of my life in the field in Africa and South East Asia so I'm not used to dressing up - it hadn't occurred to me to get my hair and make-up done professionally."

Inside the Palace, guided up the sweeping staircase by equerries to the reception, it was a whirl of frenetic networking. "Business cards were flying through the air," she says. "I met so many important women. I was introduced to Cherie Booth and she was great, really interested in my work.

"I had a chat with Heather McCartney about our respective charities. Charlotte Church was sweet; I said it must be hard for her to be so successful at a young age. She said she'd been given this gift and it was a shame not to do anything with it. It was terrifying being there on my own and having to go up to people and introduce myself. I was drinking white wine - I drank one glass really quickly because I was nervous; also on offer were gin and tonics, orange juice and coffee.

"The staff were very kind and they pretended not to notice when they were pouring coffee that my hands were shaking." The buffet lunch ("so much of it - salmon and monkfish, sauteed loin of lamb, risotto of mushroom and courgette, chicken, salad and an amazing passion fruit cheesecake") was served in the Throne Room, spread out on huge tables with, disappointingly, not an item of Tupperware in sight. There also wasn't quite enough cutlery, or chairs, to go round.

"It was quite funny watching all these powerful women balancing plates on their knees," she laughs.

"The Palace is just stunning," continues Charlotte. "There were several rooms we could wander around in, every one enormous and, surprisingly, heated by electric bar fires. I turned a corner, in a bit of a daze, and almost bumped into the Queen, who was standing in one room with Princess Anne and the Countess of Wessex. It was quite informal - very few were wearing hats. The Queen was very nice and asked me what I did. I think I curtsied, but I can't remember. I found myself standing between Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood, with the Queen right in front of me. It was surreal."

So what was Kate Moss, who wore a beautiful vintage blue dress, like in the flesh? "Really, really beautiful."

Other women who stood out for Charlotte were the novelist Zadie Smith, who wore a red silk skirt and flowers in her hair, and Twiggy, in a purple tail coat.

Charlotte set up her charity, Trade Plus Aid, in 1992, and has raised more than £3.7 million, helping thousands of people in 21 developing countries. She grew up in Italy - her father was president of the British Chamber of Commerce for Europe in Milan - but she was sent to St Michael's Burton Park, in England when she was 11.

"The girls were bitchy, it was cold and damp and I hated it," she says. "I was unhappy so I decided that I was determined to make every day of my life count for something."

With a social conscience from an early age, she made jewellery to sell and would send the money to charity or whatever-Blue Peter Appeal was going on at the time. After a further two years at Lancing College in West Sussex, and a degree in PPE from Edinburgh University, she went to Brazil to save the rainforests and leant a lesson: the power of celebrity.

Then 25, nobody took her seriously until she approached the Prince of Wales and he became involved. Within a year, she had met the Brazilian president, raised more than £750,000, and established an Amazonian conservation area larger than Britain.

She moved on to Africa and, while in Ghana, fell ill with amoebic dysentery and was nursed by the women in a village. "I found out that they had lost all their seed and were facing drought and famine. I had £800 left and I tried to give it to them but they wouldn't accept it." Instead they carved 800 wooden pendants, which Charlotte brought back to London to sell on Portobello market. They became a cult hit, worn by celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, and Charlotte took orders for thousands more. Within two years she had raised enough money to secure 6,000 farms, support 25,000 people and build three schools in the area. "I went back