Anna Murdoch-Mann, author and ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, dies aged 81 | US news
Author and philanthropist Anna Murdoch-Mann, the ex-wife of Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, died on Tuesday at her home in Palm Beach, Florida. He was 81 years old.
Murdoch-Mann’s death was reported Friday. New York Postone 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 had three children: Elisabeth, James and Lachlan, who is now chairman of News Corp.
The couple separated in 1998 following Rupert Murdoch’s affair with his third wife, Wendi Deng. Murdoch-Mann said he was forced to leave the News Corp board following the split.
Their divorce was finalized in 1999, and Murdoch-Mann reportedly received $1.7 billion from the settlement. Just 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 later married Ashton dePeyster in 2019.
Murdoch-Mann addressed the difficulties in her marriage to Rupert Murdoch in a tell-all interview with Australian Women’s Weekly in 2001. She said he was extremely tough, ruthless, and determined to do whatever I asked or tried to do to save my marriage.
“He had nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
In the same interview, Murdoch-Mann also expressed fear at the idea of her children competing to succeed their father, and included Prudence, Murdoch’s stepdaughter from his first marriage to model Patricia Booker, as one of those children.
“I think they’re all so good they can do whatever they want,” he said. “But I think there will be a lot of heartbreak and difficulty about this. [fight for succession].”
This dynamic inspired HBO’s hit series Succession.
In September 2025, it was announced that Lachlan Murdoch, the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch and Anna Murdoch-Mann, would take control of the sprawling media empire his father created, including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the Times in the United Kingdom. His three oldest siblings would each receive an estimated $1.1 billion for their stake in the company.
Murdoch-Mann was born Anna Torv in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, Jakob Torv, an Estonian merchant seaman, and his Scottish mother emigrated to Australia in 1944, when he was nine, settling in Sydney’s western suburbs. Murdoch’s biographers suggest that young Anna had a difficult childhood after her parents separated and she left her to raise her younger siblings.
However, he became a reporter first for the Sydney Daily Mirror and then for the Sydney Daily Telegraph. She first met and interviewed her future husband, who had just bought the paper, when she was working as a student journalist at the Mirror at the age of 18.
He also wrote three novels: In His Own Image (1985), The Family Business (1988), and Coming to Terms (1992), and was involved in philanthropic activities benefiting children.
A devout Catholic, he often cited his faith as a mainstay during the public dissolution of his marriage and subsequent departure from the News Corp board.
He served in leadership roles at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti, and in 1998 he was the recipient of Pope John Paul II’s appointment. She was made a Lady of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by John Paul II.
Murdoch-Mann was also the aunt of multi-award-winning Australian actress Anna Torv. In a work of art imitating life, young Anna Torv starred in the Australian hit series The Newsreader, playing a high-profile news anchor navigating the cutthroat corporate media world of the 1980s; During this period, his aunt was the most powerful woman in the real-life Murdoch empire.
