June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Princess Caroline of Monaco was among 275 guests sipping Don Ruinart champagne and watching Duran Duran perform at the Louvre Museum's biggest-ever fundraising bash last night, which raised $2.6 million, organizers said.

After a private glimpse of the Mona Lisa, patrons -- many flown in from the U.S., the U.K., Russia, China, and Latin America -- sat at two mirrored banquet tables adorned with yellow orchids at the foot of the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre's Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities gallery. The menu: asparagus in truffle juice, veal medallions, and Coulommiers cheese.

They then bid a total of $800,000 for five lots including a Cartier watch and stays at the Bahamas home of magician David Copperfield and at the Chateau de Balleroy in Normandy, bought by Malcolm Forbes in 1970. Duran Duran played for 45 minutes -- and for free -- on a podium beneath the Louvre's glass pyramid, with seven huge crystal chandeliers lent by Baccarat hanging over their heads.

``The wow factor was there all night long,'' said Becca Cason Thrash, the Houston-based vice-chairwoman of American Friends of the Louvre, who hosted the party. ``To bring everyone to the City of Lights, to the Louvre, and the fact that the Louvre had never done this -- it took your breath away.''

Thrash said she spent all of yesterday with a French calligrapher ``making last-minute corrections on place cards that had been done in America: We don't know every nuance of their titles.'' One Spanish count had eight components to his name; ``we practically had to put his on a poster board!'' she said.

Fundraising Goal

The dinner was part of a series of events sponsored by AFL, a U.S. nonprofit organization set up in December 2002 to help the museum fund renovations and form ties with U.S. counterparts. Last night's gala helped AFL exceed its fundraising goal of $4 million, said Thrash, mostly thanks to dinner tickets -- priced at $10,000 for U.S. patrons and 3,000 euros ($4,650) for Paris-based guests.

The $4 million will go toward a Louis XV furniture set for the Louvre's 18th-century decorative-arts galleries, which the museum is busy renovating, said Eliane de la Beraudiere, of the Paris-based PR and events agency Shortcut, which organized the gala in tandem with Los Angeles-based Ben Bourgeois.

Three days of events dubbed ``Liaisons au Louvre'' end today with a tea party hosted by couturier Christian Lacroix and dinner at the headquarters of Axa SA, Europe's second-biggest insurer, offered by Chief Executive Officer Henri de Castries, who is on AFL's board.

Abu Dhabi

The Louvre is reaching out to donors as a condition for renewed state aid. It is lending art over a three-year period to Atlanta's High Museum of Art, generating 5.4 million euros ($8.5 million) for the 18th-century furniture rooms; setting up an Abu Dhabi offshoot, for which it is receiving 400 million euros; and getting 17 million euros from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for an Islamic wing.

The museum is required to raise 40 percent of its annual budget of around 180 million euros.

According to the Louvre's own Web site, AFL helped fund the Girodet exhibition (September 2005-January 2006) as well as trilingual description plaques in the museum's galleries, the English translation of the Louvre's online collection database and guided-tour audio equipment.

Gifts to AFL are tax-deductible according to U.S. law, the Louvre said on its Web site.

To contact the reporter on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 11, 2008 09:04 EDT