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A first chapter is the door by which the reader enters the book. As I wrote here, the first chapter often foreshadows the end, at least in mood and style. It also usually introduces the main characters, the setting --and sometimes the inciting incident of the plot.
If the rest of your book is moving along briskly, it's worth considering just starting from what you have, and not trying to write an introductory chapter at all. I've read plenty of books that could have stood to have been trimmed a bit at the beginning. With all that said, what exists in your reader's mind is only what you give them on the page. They need to have enough of a description to visualize the character and the settings, enough context to know what is important and why, and so forth.
It quickly gets clunky, however, when the writer has to spend a lot of time explaining things to the reader that the characters already know, and modern readers have little patience for that kind of exposition. You'll get a little more allowance for exposition at the beginning, but not a whole lot of it. For that reason, one good way to start your book is by finding a plausible reason for your POV character to observe or comment on some of the main things that will become important to the reader.
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