Author and philanthropist Anna Murdoch-Mann, ex-wife of Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, died Tuesday at her home in Palm Beach, Florida. She is 81 years old.
Murdoch-Mann’s death was reported Friday by the New York Post, one of her ex-husband’s media properties.
During their 31-year marriage, Murdoch-Mann reportedly played an active role in building Murdoch’s media empire, News Corp. She and Murdoch also have three children: Elisabeth, James and Lachlan, who is now chairman of News Corp.
The couple separated in 1998 after Rupert Murdoch had an affair with his third wife, Wendy Deng. Murdochman said she was forced off the News Corp board in the wake of the rift.
Their divorce was finalized in 1999, with Murdoch-Mann reportedly receiving $1.7bn from the settlement. A few weeks after the divorce was finalized, Rupert Murdoch married Deng on his yacht in New York harbor.
In October 1999, Murdoch-Mann married Wall Street financier William Mann. They were married until Mann’s death in 2017. She then married Ashton Depester in 2019.
Murdoch-Man granted a tell-all interview to Australian Women’s Weekly in 2001, opening up about the difficulties in her marriage to Rupert Murdoch. He was “very strict, brutal and determined to go through with this no matter what I wanted or what I tried to do to save the marriage.
“He’s not interested in that.”
In the same interview, Murdoch-Man also expressed trepidation at the idea of his children vying to succeed their father.
“I think everybody’s pretty good, they can do whatever they want,” she said. “But I think there will be a lot of heartbreak and hardship with this [fight for succession].”
That dynamic inspired a succession of hit HBO shows.
In September 2025, Lachlan Murdoch – the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch and Anna Murdoch-Mann – was announced to have secured control of the vast media empire created by his father, which includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the UK’s Times. His three older siblings are due to receive $1.1bn each for their stakes in the business.
Murdoch-Mann was born Anna Torv in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1944, when she was nine years old, her family emigrated to Australia. She later became a reporter at the Sydney Daily Mirror and later the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
She has also authored three novels and is involved in philanthropic programs that benefit children. She held leadership roles at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Haiti’s Hospital Albert Schweitzer, and was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II in 1998.
