To many in the Czech Republic, she is celebrated as a local girl who went on to achieve global celebrity. Now Ivana Trump, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first wife, says she wants to become ambassador to the Czech Republic, leading some in her homeland to hope that she can inject some glamour into the central European country and burnish its global image.

Speculation about whether Ms. Trump, 67, could become America’s top diplomat in Prague has been swirling in the Czech Republic since she told The New York Post that she would be well-suited for the job.

“I will suggest that I be ambassador for the Czech Republic,” Ms. Trump told the Post in an interview published over the weekend, noting that she was fluent in Czech and had a high profile in the country of her birth. “I’m known by the name Ivana. I really did not need the name Trump.”

If she were to become ambassador, Ms. Trump would not be the first celebrity to hold the post. Shirley Temple Black, the child star turned diplomat, was appointed ambassador to Czechoslovakia in 1989 by President George Bush. Her championing of the country before and after the fall of communism won her ardent admiration.