Now 50, Wendi Deng contemplates middle-age, divorced twice with two children, a Fifth Avenue apartment in New York, estimated net worth of US$100 million and non-stop press speculation about what she is really up to. Close to the Trump family, she is suspected of working for the Chinese government. U.S. counter-intelligence officials have warned Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to beware. Recently Wendi ditched a Hungarian toyboy lover of two years, so who’s she dating now? Vanity Fair suggests it is Vladimir Putin, but admits to having no evidence of this. Did she have affairs with Tony Blair (who denies it) and Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman (he declines to comment)? The press work themselves into a lather over Wendi Deng. “As for what people think about me, I could worry about that every day, but choose not to,” she says.
Now she calls herself Wendi Murdoch. Equally she could be Wendi Cherry, which has a better ring. Before she leapt into the global spotlight in the arms of arguably the world’s most powerful media mogul, Wendi had been married previously. The story of Wendi Deng Cherry Murdoch is one of a talented girl from a poor background who became globally famous. “I grew up in a little funny town called Xuzhou, in the countryside, very poor. We didn’t have hot water. My great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet.”
Wendi’s big break came in Hong Kong when she was working for Star TV. She was born on December 8, 1968, in Shandong, China, and raised in Jiangsu. While attending medical college, she was awarded a study permit for the US. She moved to Los Angeles in 1988, staying with the Cherry family. The six-foot Asian beauty ended up having an affair with Mr Jake Cherry. They married in 1990, nuptials that lasted less than three years.
An intelligent girl, Wendi obtained an economics degree at California State University and an MBE at Yale. She met Bruce Churchill who was working for Fox TV in Los Angeles. He offered her an internship at News Corporation’s Star TV in Hong Kong and her destiny was set. She caught the eye of Rupert Murdoch. They were wed in 1999 aboard his superyacht “Morning Glory”. Two children were born of the union, Grace and Chloe. Wendi’s tiger woman image was established and shown on TV screens around the world when she sprang over her husband at a British parliamentary hearing to defend him from a foam-pie throwing attacker. Wendi hit the protestor with a deft left cross. The marriage broke up in 2013 with Rupert citing irreconcilable differences. Vanity Fair and the Daily Telegraph claimed Tony Blair, godfather to Grace, had been having an affair with Wendi. A love note from Wendi to Tony was published in Vanity Fair. It gushed about his “good body” particularly his “butt” and “piercing blue eyes”. The Economist said Rupert severed relations with the former British Prime Minster.
Rupert was reported to be worth about US$12 billion at the time of the divorce. Earlier he had reached a divorce settlement with his previous wife Anna that awarded her US$1.1 billion. Stung, he insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement with Wendi. The exact terms have never been revealed but she is known to have been given the Fifth Avenue apartment in which she now lives with Grace and Chloe. Domestic staff have been quoted as saying the tiger woman image is correct. “The apartment was like a war zone,” one helper who quit said.
Aside from befriending the Trumps, Wendy became a film producer — “I didn’t know what I was getting into”– and an arts investor. She’s co-CEO of Big Feet Productions which made the film “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” and the documentary “Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-qiang”. Some of the money she got from Rupert she has invested in what at the time were start-ups, Uber and Snapchat. She is active in the art scene as a director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was a co-founder of the online art dealing website, Artsy. Here she teamed up with luxury goods billionaire Francois Pinault and tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt. Vanity Fair claims Wendi romped at night in the Beverley Hills Hotel with the Google Chairman. Her latest flame has been the 23-year-old Hungarian model and toyboy, Bertold Zahoran. That lasted two years and they split a few months ago. Bertold aside, Wendi’s taste in men appears focused on the rich and famous. Who will be next for the fitness-conscious, still shapely 50-year-old millionairess?
Be the first to comment