A black banker in Goldman Sachs’s personal wealth management unit filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing the firm of steering top clients to her white colleagues and denying her promotions because of her race.

In a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the banker, Rebecca Allen, said Goldman Sachs’s virtually all-white senior leadership team favored white bankers for promotions and lucrative accounts, so they earned more than black co-workers.

“Simply put, Goldman Sachs does virtually nothing to hire, promote or develop black talent, instead focusing its efforts on retaining and promoting white employees to positions of leadership,” Ms. Allen said in the complaint.

Goldman Sachs said in a statement that the claims were meritless.

“Our success depends on our ability to maintain a diverse employee base and we are focused on recruiting, retaining and promoting diverse professionals at all levels,” the company said.

Ms. Allen, who was hired in 2012, said that last year she was removed from an account she had worked on for three years by a Goldman partner, Christina Minnis. Ms. Allen said her supervisor met with Ms. Minnis about the decision and said she made racist and anti-Semitic comments about Ms. Allen, who is Jewish.

Ms. Minnis is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Ms. Allen’s lawyers at the law firm Wigdor in New York said in a statement that they believed that other black Goldman Sachs employees would come forward with similar claims.

“We can expose what is really happening behind the closed doors with regard to the denial of opportunity for entrance and advancement for qualified black individuals,” the lawyers said.

Wigdor is also representing a group of nonwhite current and former employees of Fox News Network who say in a lawsuit in New York State Court that they were belittled and marginalized because of their race. Fox has denied the claims.

Ms. Allen’s lawsuit comes as Goldman Sachs is facing proposed class-action claims in the same court in Manhattan accusing the firm of discriminating against women in pay and promotions. Goldman has denied the claims and in June appealed a judge’s decision rejecting its bid to dismiss part of the case.

In her lawsuit, Ms. Allen said her male colleagues were assigned to more lucrative accounts. But her legal claims stem only from alleged discrimination based on her race and religion.