Some 165 items that belonged to the late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith will be put up for auction later this month in Las Vegas after a judge approved the sale organised by her former partner.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff gave the green light for the Julien's Auctions sale at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on June 26 and 27. An exhibition will be put on display for the public from Monday till June 24.

Howard K. Stern, Smith's former partner, lawyer and executor of her estate, asked the court permission to conduct the auction to boost the inheritance of Ms Smith's three-year-old daughter Dannielynn Hope.

A US federal appeals court ruled in March this year that Ms Smith's heirs will not receive a penny of the more than $300 million she had claimed to her inheritance of billionaire husband E. Pierce Marshall, the son of Texas oil tycoon Howard Marshall.

She married Mr Marshall in 1994 after meeting him while working at a strip club. She was 26 at the time and he was 89.

Mr Marshall died in 1995 after a 14-month marriage, sparking a prolonged legal battle over his $1.6 billion estate.

At the time of her death from an accidental drug overdose in a Florida hotel room in February 2007, Ms Smith's will - which had not been updated - left all her wealth to her son Daniel, who had died six months earlier, with Mr Stern assigned as the estate executor.