Wendi Deng Murdoch was born in Jinan, Shandong and raised in Xuzhou, Jiangsu. Her birth name was Deng Wenge, Deng, the family name, and Wenge meaning "Cultural Revolution". She has two older sisters, and a brother, and both of her parents were engineers. When she was a teen she compressed her first name into "Wendi". She attended Xuzhou First Secondary School. She became a competitive volleyball player. While she was in high school, her father relocated to Guangzhou, where he was a factory director at the People's Machinery Works; she and her family remained in Xuzhou until they joined their father a short time later. At the age of 16, she was enrolled at the Guangzhou Medical College. In 1988, she left medical school and went to the United States on a study permit. She enrolled at California State University, Northridge, where she studied economics and was among the top scoring students. She obtained a BA in Economics from California State University at Northridge and an MBA from Yale University.
Upon graduation from Yale in 1996, Deng met Bruce Churchill. At that time, Churchill oversaw finance and corporate development at the Fox TV branch in Los Angeles. He offered Deng an internship at News Corp subsidiary Star TV in Hong Kong, which developed into a full-time junior executive position. Though a junior employee, she took a role in working to plan Star TV's operations in Hong Kong and China and helped to build up Chinese distribution for Star's Channel V music channel. Within one year, she became a vice president. Additionally, she investigated interactive TV opportunities for News Digital Systems.
Jake and Joyce Cherry hosted Deng in their home during her studies in the United States. Later, Jake Cherry left his wife, and married Wendi Deng in 1990. While married to Cherry, Wendi Deng Murdoch obtained a green card. Their marriage lasted 2 years and 7 months when they divorced. Jake later said that they stayed together for only four to five months when he learned that Deng was spending time with David Wolf, a man closer to her age. In 1997, she met Rupert Murdoch, who is 37 years her senior, while working as an executive at the Murdoch-owned Star TV in Hong Kong. They married in 1999 on board his yacht "Morning Glory", less than three weeks after the finalization of his divorce from his second wife, Anna Murdoch. The couple had two children, Grace and Chloe. Tony Blair is Grace Murdoch's godfather. In June 2013, Rupert Murdoch filed for divorce from Wendi Murdoch, citing irreconcilable differences. On July 19, 2011, Wendi Murdoch counter-attacked Jonathan May-Bowles after he attempted to throw a pie at her husband Rupert Murdoch while he was giving testimony before a British parliamentary committee considering the News International phone hacking scandal. May-Bowles was subsequently sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment. In February 2014, The Daily Telegraph and Vanity Fair alleged that Wendi Murdoch had an affair with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. An article in The Economist claimed that as a result of Rupert Murdoch's suspicion that Blair had an affair with his wife, he ended his long-standing association with Blair in 2014. In early 2018, The Wall Street Journal published a story suggesting that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, close acquaintances of Murdoch, were warned by US intelligence agencies that Murdoch may be using their friendship to further the goals of the Chinese government. Kushner, Trump and Murdoch denied the allegations, while none of the parties involved, including Murdoch, were formally accused of any wrongdoing. Murdoch lives in New York City with her two daughters.
