Hell had no fury as Wendi Deng. She drew herself up and lunged at the attacker seeming to aim a blow straight at his face. She had to reach over another person in her bid to defend her husband of 14 years and lost her balance for all her efforts. And made headlines the world over.

The last time she did that – make headlines the world over, that is – was when she wed Murdoch in 1999, merely 17 days after his divorce from his second wife Anna came through. But she has been in the spotlight ever since, as the fashionable wife of the media baron, who is armed with a Yale MBA degree to boot.

Wendi Deng was born in 1969, the year Rupert Murdoch bought the News of the World – the 168-year-old British tabloid that shut down this month in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.   

She was born Chinese. And she was born Deng Wen Ge, named after the cultural revolution. She is said to have changed her name to Wendi as a teen. She schooled in China and was sponsored in 1988 for a student visa to study in the US at the California State University. Thereafter she got her MBA degree from Yale University. She had been married and divorced by then.

In 1996, Wendi moved to Hong Kong and life reportedly changed on the flight there. She met Bruce Churchill on the flight and got a position as an intern at Star TV.

Deng met Ruport two years later, in 1998. She was a junior executive at SkyTV, all of 29 years old. He was 67. A year after he first met her, Murdoch married his employee. They have two children and have been described as a couple bound together by their love of business.

Wendi Deng Murdoch is also said to have a strong influence on her husband in business matters.