The awkward comment that got Ivanka Trump hissed and booed by an audience.

Ivanka Trump has been booed in Berlin after she described her father Donald as a “tremendous champion of supporting families” and says she’s still fine-tuning her role as first daughter and informal White House adviser.

Trump, 35, who is seen as an increasingly important influence on her father, told a women’s summit organised by the Group of 20 major economies in the German capital that she wanted to use her influence to help empower women.

Asked whether she represented the President, the American people or her business as first daughter, she replied: "Well certainly not the latter, and I am rather unfamiliar with this role ... it has been a little under 100 days but it has just been a remarkable and incredible journey."

Ivanka Trump's appointment as an adviser, with access to classified information, was highly unusual for the daughter of a President. Seeking to allay ethics concerns, she said last month she would serve in the White House in an unpaid, informal role.

In Berlin, she discussed support for female entrepreneurs with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde among others.

"I'm listening, I'm learning, I'm defining the ways in which I think that I'll be able to have impact," she told the panel discussion.

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But the audience was unsympathetic when she called her father a "tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive", with the moderator moving the discussion on amid a chorus of boos.

Donald Trump found himself at the centre of a furious controversy during the presidential campaign when a video surfaced in which he boasted about grabbing women's genitals.

Asked whether some of the attitudes expressed by her father raised questions over his commitment to empowering women, Ivanka Trump said her experience and that of thousands of women who had worked for him showed he believed in women's potential.

"I think the thousands of women who have worked with and for my father for decades ... are testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man," she said.

During the Berlin discussion, Donald Trump tweeted a link to a Financial Times editorial Ivanka co-authored with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on investment in women and said he was "proud" of his daughter for "her leadership on these important issues".