Here we take a look at her life, address the rumours and ask the question – where is Wendi Deng now?

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Deng Wenge (she changed her name to Wendi as a teen) was born in China’s eastern Jiangsu province to engineer parents who were both loyal members of the Communist Party, according to The Daily Beast.

But the medical school student had met people who had family and friends living and studying in the US, and when a kindly couple in China at the time – Joyce and Jake Cherry – offered to sponsor her schooling in the US, she dropped out of medical school to enrol in the California State University at Northridge. Deng studied economics and was said to be one of the top-scoring students before going on to obtain an MBA from Yale in 1997.

However, in a twist of events that didn’t show Deng in a particularly good light, she got together with her benefactor, Jake Cherry, causing him to split from his wife, who had taught Deng English in the first place.

Deng and Cherry married, Deng got a green card, and the pair split four months later, though they stayed married on paper for two years and seven months, according to New York Magazine. When an interviewer from UK Vogue asked Deng to confirm if they’d got this version of events right, the billionaire’s ex-wife simply replied, “Yep.”

Whatever labels have been placed on Deng, she hasn’t let them hold her back. And one thing is for sure – the woman works hard. She told UK Vogue: “I was willing to do anything [in America]. I studied and worked in a Chinese restaurant to support myself. People would say to me ‘Oh you must be missing home’, but I had grown up hard. I was so happy to be there. I had never even been in a supermarket before coming to America. At home, my parents wouldn’t let me open the refrigerator, because they worried I’d damage the door by opening it too many times.”

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She met Rupert Murdoch when she was an intern in Hong Kong

Soon after she graduated, in 1997, Deng scored an internship at Star TV in Hong Kong, which was then a subsidiary of the Murdoch-owned News Corp.

So how did she meet her future husband? According to British media, Murdoch was in town addressing the staff when a gutsy Deng suddenly asked, “Why is your business strategy in China so bad?”

Just over a year later they got married on his 47-metre (155-foot yacht), the Morning Glory, in New York Harbour – 17 days after Murdoch divorced his second wife, Anna, of 32 years. Murdoch was 68 at the time and 30 years Deng’s senior.

The two were married for 14 years before Murdoch filed for divorce in June 2013, saying the marriage had “broken down irretrievably”. Deng was said to be “blindsided” by the filing, according to Vanity Fair.

Their nasty divorce, Tony Blair and those spy rumours …

Two years before their divorce in 2011, Deng made global headlines when she leapt to her husband’s defence in the most dramatic way possible.

During a UK parliamentary select committee hearing in which Murdoch was being dressed down for his newspapers’ practice of hacking private phones for stories, a comedian threw a custard pie at the media mogul. Deng literally leapt out of her seat and smacked comedian Jonnie Marbles across the head in response.

While she emerged triumphant after the incident – particularly in China – Deng’s reputation took a battering after the divorce. Vanity Fair and others reported that the reason for the couple’s split was that Deng had been having illicit affairs with Prime Minister Tony Blair and even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt.

Deng denies that anything happened, but in 2014, The Mail on Sunday reported a series of email exchanges between Deng and Blair, which had allegedly fuelled Murdoch’s suspicion of the two and were revealed during divorce proceedings. Vanity Fair also revealed a note reportedly written by Deng that praised Blair’s “good body”, his “really, really good legs” and even his “butt”.

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In 2017, Deng found herself in headlines once again when she was suspected of being a spy by US counter-intelligence officials who had reportedly warned Jared Kushner she could be helping the Chinese government.

Deng’s spokesperson told the Murdoch-owned Journal that she “has no knowledge of any FBI concerns or other intelligence agency concerns to her or her associations”.

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After her divorce from Murdoch, Deng had been keeping a relatively low profile when it came to romance, though she was still spotted on several dates with 21-year-old Hungarian model Bertold Zahoran between 2017 and 2018.

Where is Wendi Deng now?

Much more than just a billionaire’s wife, Deng is an accomplished businesswoman, investor, film producer (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Netflix’s Sky Ladder) and art collector.

Despite listing New York as her whereabouts in her Instagram bio, British media has reported that residents haven’t spotted her at any restaurants or house parties recently.

It seems that Deng has been careful about her public appearances, and perhaps prefers a life away from the limelight after the drama of recent years.

Or perhaps she’s just enjoying her hard-earned cash and the money she received from the divorce. According to New York Magazine, Deng retained the couple’s US$44 million Fifth Avenue penthouse triplex and a house in Beijing. The pair reportedly had a prenup before they married.

Deng shares two daughters with Murdoch: Grace, 21, and Chloe, 19 and has a reported net worth of US$100 million, per Celebrity Net Worth.