Every presidential administration needs a grande dame to smooth relations between rival factions and serve as a bridge to society. In the 1970s and ’80s, Sally Quinn, then married to Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post, was known for the high-I.Q. salons held at their Georgetown townhouse. Roughly a decade later, Georgette Mosbacher, a cosmetics executive and philanthropist, became Washington’s hostess supreme as a result of the round-table dinner parties she hosted with her then-husband, the oil tycoon turned commerce secretary Robert A. Mosbacher.

Who will take on that important but unofficial role under President Trump? A strong candidate is Hilary Geary Ross, 66, a fixture of Palm Beach and New York society and wife of the 79-year-old multibillionaire investor and industrialist Wilbur L. Ross Jr., who is likely to be confirmed as commerce secretary as early as next week.

C-Span cameras captured Ms. Ross as she sat behind her husband when he testified before Congress on Jan. 18. At one point she had a laugh with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. On Jan. 27, Daily Mail photographers on a stakeout caught the arrival of Ms. Ross and her husband as they made their way into a Shabbat dinner held at the Washington home of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

As Ms. Ross prepares to become a significant social presence in the capital, she is overseeing the remodeling of a 10,000-square-foot mansion, complete with a movie theater and staff quarters, on a portion of Woodland Avenue known as “billionaires’ row” in the city’s Massachusetts Heights enclave. The couple purchased the home not long after the election, for a reported $10 million.