Rupert Murdoch is known for his career as a media tycoon. But he’s also a family man and has successfully raised seven children to adulthood. Rupert and his first wife, model Patricia Booker, married in 1956, had their only child Prudence in 1958 and later divorced in 1967. That same year, the newspaper powerhouse married journalist Anna Mann (Torv), and they had three children together between the late 60’s and early 70’s — Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.
After divorcing Anna in 1999, he married Wendi Deng, with whom he had his two youngest children in the early 2000’s, Grace and Chloe. Wendi and Murdoch were divorced by 2013. In 2016, he married for the fourth time, to model (and Mick Jagger‘s ex) Jerry Hall. They didn’t have any children, and on June 22, 2022, the couple announced their split. Here’s everything to know about Rupert’s children from his first three marriages.
Prudence “Prue” Murdoch MacLeod was born in 1958 in Adelaide, South Australia, to Patricia, a former model and flight attendant, and Rupert. The billionaire’s eldest child has been married twice — to Crispin Odey, for only one year, and Alasdair MacLeod, whom she married in 1989. She had three children with her second husband, James, Angus and Clementine, all of Sydney.
She followed in her father’s footsteps, and according to her Wikipedia page, she has held directorial roles in Rupert’s News Corporation, and currently serves as a board member of Times Newspapers, Ltd. She’s also worked as a journalist and tabloid researcher for News of the World.
Prudence reportedly never chased after her father’s vast empire. “I’ve always been low-key and not many people know about me… I just love that,” she once told The Guardian. Together with Alasdair, she launched Macdoch Ventures. The company utilizes the family’s massive wealth to, as described on their official site, “support Australia & New Zealand’s late seed stage founders.”
Elisabeth is Rupert’s only daughter from his marriage Anna, and the eldest of the three resulting from his second union. Born in August 22, 1968 in Sydney, she was named after her paternal grandma, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. She attended the Brearly School in New York and received her Bachelor’s Degree from Vassar College. She’s been married three times — first to Elkin Kwesi Pianim, from 1993-1998. The couple had two children, Cornelia Pianim (born 1994) and Anna Pianim, born in 1997 before their divorce in 1998.
She married Matthew Freud, PR executive and great grandson of Sigmund Freud, in 2001 and had two children with him, as well, though little is publicly known about them. They divorced in 2014, and she married artist Keith Tyson in 2017. Once favored to take over her father’s empire, Elisabeth founded production company Shine Group in 2001. She then made herself rich by selling it back to Rupert’s News Corp in 2011.
