Supermodel Naomi Campbell was charged with assault for throwing her cell phone at a housekeeper after accusing her of stealing clothes when she couldn’t find a pair of jeans she wanted to wear on Oprah Winfrey’s television show, prosecutors said.

She was released on her own recognizance and allowed to keep her passport after her lawyer argued that her famous face would prevent her from fleeing.

“She is probably the most recognized and prominent model in the world,” a defense attorney, David Breitbart, told a judge yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court. “There is no place she could go and not be recognized.”

Ms. Campbell, wearing a white fur poncho, was arraigned on a charge of second-degree assault before Judge Richard Weinberg, who allowed Mr. Breitbart to enter a plea of not guilty on her behalf.

The housekeeper was treated at a hospital for a cut that required four staples, said an assistant district attorney, Elina Kreditor, who asked the judge to set bail at $3,500 and to order Ms. Campbell, who is British, to surrender her passport.

Mr. Breitbart called the request for $3,500 bail “an insult,” saying his client’s Park Avenue apartment is worth more than $3 million and she earns “more than six figures on a regular basis.”

He said Ms. Campbell needed her passport for a trip to South Africa next week to visit Nelson Mandela. He asked the judge for orders to keep the housekeeper away from Ms. Campbell’s apartment.