It depends on what you mean by Dragonborn as that has two rules answers.
1 is the dragonborn from 3.5's draconomicon which were a reptillian race who were "born" after being chosen by bahamut and crafting an expensive egg to be reborn in. Dragonborn in this context could choose a breath weapon, flight, and something else that I'm forgetting at the moment.
2 is the dragonborn from 4e and onward, which are draconic humanoids who sometimes have breath weapons and do not have tails or wings.
The key point between the two is that they look like humanoids with dragon heads and scales, and arms.
What you are describing might better be portrayed as a sorcerer or other "bloodline" class who has a draconic ancestry. (So a sorcerer with the draconic bloodline and picking gold from the list of dragons.)
If you are willing to homebrew, well you can describe it as anything. You can always even use a custom race you built yourself.
Finally, as far as power: the race stats weren't that strong even in the 3.5 version. They were about as powerful as humans/elves/etc. So it really depends on how many class levels she has, and what class she is.
OH RIGHT, no matter what edition, if you really want an NPC to help out without overpowering the party, try classes like bard. Every party can benefit from bardic music without the bard looking like it solves every problem.
Okay, if that's the case, here's my honest advice: Make her the same level as the players. You don't have to justify it. Just to keep balance.
Then, as the party progresses through the story you can "progress" her lineage as you see fit. As far as ancestry is concerned, it can be really really subtle. I once played a Fire Giant-Blooded Human Fighter in Giantslayer. The only tell that she had the blood was that sometimes people could swear they saw her hair glimmer with fire out of the corner of their eye, but not while directly looking at her.
I would approach this situation one of two ways, I'd either have the draconic ancestry be through class features or I'd refluff an existing race to make it more draconic. Either would be relatively balanced imo.
When it comes to class features sorcerer has built in draconic bloodline, and if multiclassed can be a dragon disciple. Cleric or rogue would be more difficult. For the rogue I'd consider eldritch scoundrel unchained rogue (with a re flavored race) and getting dragon like abilities through spells, like fly, a cone of (fire) breath weapon, ect. A cleric with the dragon subdomain (and possibly one of the re flavored races) would be OK.
An example of changing a race would be the ifrit. I'd also change the creature type to humanoid and dragon. I'd add the mostly human alternate racial trait and that'd be the end of it. Other races that might work for refluffing would be Rakshasa-Spawn Tiefling (with pass for human), Agathion-blooded Aasimar (with scion of humanity), Azata-blooded Aasimar (with scion of humanity).
Paladin 2/Bard 3or4 into Dragon Disciple is pretty good mechanically while growing into draconic power, and Paladinhood would certainly be thematic with gold dragon ancestry. I'd recommend the Sacred Shield archetype for the paladin levels. It changes out Smite Evil for Bastion of Good, which makes the target deal only half damage to the paladin's allies that are within 10' of said paladin.
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Draconic bloodline sorceress makes sense to me.
Check out the Dragon Soul half-elf variant in Legacy of Dragons.
It trades either your elf half or your human half in favor of a watered down half version of a dragon (so it's still eligible for dragon disciple). Bonus, it can take the blended view trait and have perfect vision.