Wendi Deng Murdoch

While Deng was staying with Jake and Joyce Cherry in their San Fernando Valley home, Joyce found out that Deng and Jake were having an affair. Deng was 30 years younger to him. Thereafter, Joyce showed the door to Deng, but Jake followed Deng and the two went on to tie the knot in 1990.

As a result of her marriage to Jake, Deng procured a green card, but the marriage culminated into divorce after 2 years and 7 months. Jake later claimed that they lived together for around 4 to 5 months till the time he came to know that she was seeing a man in his mid-20’s named David Wolf.

She was introduced to Rupert Murdoch in 1997 while serving Star TV in Hong Kong. The two gradually came closer. In June 1999, Murdoch divorced his second wife, Anna Murdoch, and after 17 days, the 68 years old Australian-born American media mogul married Deng on his yacht ‘Morning Glory’ on June 25.

Wendi Deng Murdoch was born Deng Wenge on December 8, 1968, in Jinan, Shandong, China, as one of the three daughters among four children to Deng Dehui and Liu Xueqin, both of whom were engineers. She changed the word Wenge in her name, meaning ‘Cultural Revolution’ to Wendi while in her teens.

Her family relocated to Xuzhou, Jiangsu, shortly after her birth. There she attended Xuzhou First Secondary School. While in school she developed interest in volleyball and started spending more time on the game so much so that her academic supervisor Mr. Qie complained that it would affect her studies and convinced her to concentrate more on University entry exams.

Her father’s professional pursuits saw him relocating to Guangzhou in Southern China where he served as the Factory Director of People’s Machinery Works. The family including Deng joined her father in Guangzhou after a short while. There she enrolled at the Guangzhou Medical College in 1985.

She was introduced to American businessman, Jake Cherry, and his wife, Joyce, in 1987. Jake was temporarily staying in China to oversee the development of a refrigerator factory. Gradually, she became acquainted with the couple with Joyce teaching her English skills.

She dropped out from Guangzhou Medical College in 1988 before completing her medical studies and traveled to the US on a student visa sponsored by the Cherrys who accompanied her and also gave her shelter in their house in America.

While looking out for a proper opening after graduation from Yale School of Management, she came across Bruce Churchill who was at that point of time managing corporate development and finance at the Los Angeles branch of ‘Fox TV’.

It was Churchill who made her an offer to work as an intern in ‘Star TV’, a subsidiary of News Corp, at its Hong Kong branch, which she accepted. With time, her impressive work helped her become a full-time junior executive. In such capacity she played a role in planning operations of ‘Star TV’ in China and Hong Kong.

She helped in developing distribution network of Star’s music channel, ‘Channel V’ in China and also examined opportunities of interactive television for News Digital Systems.

The social network company ‘MySpace’ was purchased by Murdoch’s ‘News Corporation’ in July 2005 for USD 580 million, marking among the first major internet purchases of ‘News Corporation’.

Deng, who had by now married Murdoch, served ‘MySpace’ in its China division as the chief of strategy till June 2011 when it was purchased by ‘Specific Media’. She also remained director of the holding company that licensed the brand and technology of ‘MySpace’ to its China division.