A $22 billion media empire, 6 children, and a succession battle: Meet the Murdoch family

Rupert Murdoch, the patriarch of the family, inherited a chain of Australian newspapers from his father, who was a war reporter turned publisher, in 1952. At the time, Murdoch was 22 years old and had just graduated from Oxford University.

He included scandalous stories in his papers, which helped with sales. The early success allowed him to expand quickly. He started Australia's first nationwide newspaper, The Australian, in 1964. By the 1970s, he was purchasing titles like the UK's News of the World and The Sun. He founded Fox News in 1996.

In 2018, The New York Times wrote that Murdoch was able to grow the empire so quickly "in part by ruthlessly using his platform to help elect his preferred candidates and then ruthlessly using those candidates to help extend his reach."

When Murdoch entered media markets for the first time, part of his strategy was to publish salacious content that others wouldn't — perhaps most famously in the form of the topless women on the third page of The Sun.

Years later, his British newspaper holdings were embroiled in a major voicemail hacking scandal, earning him the nickname "the dirty digger" from the satirical news show "Private Eye." In response, he shuttered the popular News of the World and, in 2012, apologized for not paying more attention to the scandal or to the paper, saying, "I am very sorry for it."

Murdoch's name is synonymous with media and influence. He has built an empire that comprises Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and other networks and newspapers across the world.

As he entered his late 80s, his succession plan emerged as a question.

Over the span of his five-decade career, he has been married five times and fathered six children, many of whom are involved in the family business. His most recent marriage was to Elena Zhukova, a retired biologist, in 2024.

Murdoch sold 21st Century Fox to Disney for $71.3 billion in 2019, netting $12 billion, which he then distributed equally among his six children.

He stepped away from leading Fox Corporation and News Corp in 2023, leaving his son Lachlan in charge.

Lachlan, 54, is Rupert Murdoch's eldest son. From 2014 until 2019, Lachlan was co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, until the company was sold to Disney for $71.3 billion.

After the Disney deal closed, Lachlan was named chief executive of Fox Corporation, the arm of the Murdoch media empire that contains Fox News and Fox Sports, which perhaps marked the final stage of the contest between the brothers to take over their father's empire. (He and James had leapfrogged each other multiple times.)

Lachlan had started out overseeing a chain of Australian newspapers at 22, and by his late 20s, he had risen to become the deputy chief operating officer of News Corp. He left the company in 2005 at the age of 33, interpreted at the time as a sign that James had taken the lead. But Lachlan was brought back into the fold by 2015.

When his father stepped down from his role in 2023, Lachlan took charge of Fox Corporation and News Corp.

Lachlan has been married to Australian model Sarah O'Hare since 1999. They have three children.

James, Rupert Murdoch's 52-year-old son, resigned from News Corp's board of directors in 2020. His resignation was included in a regulatory filing.

"My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," he wrote in a two-sentence resignation letter.

It came six months after he had slammed News Corp and Fox News for coverage that promoted climate-change skepticism amid the Australian bushfires. James has historically been more liberal than his father; He and his wife, Kathryn, donated more than $1 million to Joe Biden's presidential campaign in the 2020 cycle. In 2024, he endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

Before his departure, James was considered a likely successor to Rupert Murdoch, as he was the CEO of 21st Century Fox from 2015 until 2019, when it was sold to Disney. He had been involved in the family business for most of his adult life.

James opened his own private investment firm, Lupa Systems, in 2019. He is also on the board of directors at Tesla.

Under the agreement announced in September, James will no longer have any stake in the companies built by his father and will receive cash compensation for his shares.

James and his wife have been married since 2000 and have three children.

Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, 57, also became a media mogul. She owned and ran her own television production company, Shine, in the UK before selling it to her father for £415 million ($546 million) in 2011. The sale netted her a News Corp board seat and £153 million ($201 million). She also cofounded Sister, a global production company.

Like James, Liz will no longer have any stake in the media companies started by her father as a result of the succession agreement, and will be paid cash for her shares.

She has four children: two with her first husband Elkin Pianim and two with her second husband Matthew Freud. She married a third time, to artist Keith Tyson, in 2017.

Rupert married the Scottish journalist Anna Murdoch Mann in 1967 — his second marriage. They divorced in 1999. Together, they had three children: Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James.

Rupert also had a daughter from his first marriage. In their divorce settlement, Anna Murdoch Mann fought for those four children to be the only beneficiaries of the family trust.

She died in February, at the age of 81.

Prudence's mother was Australian model Patricia Booker. Booker and Murdoch married in 1956 and divorced in 1966.

Prudence, 67, and her husband, Alasdair MacLeod, were both involved with Murdoch businesses. They have three children.

Under the succession agreement, Prudence will not have any control over the family's media companies and will receive cash compensation for her shares.

Deng, now 57, is 37 years Rupert Murdoch's junior. They met while she was working as an executive at a Murdoch-owned network in Hong Kong. She was also an advisor for China's MySpace outfit and a film producer.

The pair married in 1999, aboard Murdoch's yacht, just weeks after his divorce from Anna Murdoch Mann was finalized. They remained married for 14 years.

Grace and Chloe, who are beneficiaries of the new Murdoch trust but do not have voting power, are now 24 and 22, respectively.

They are the last of Murdoch's six children. Their godparents are Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

Hall, 69, a former model and actress from Texas, was Murdoch's fourth wife.

The two met while she was playing Mrs. Robinson in a stage adaptation of "The Graduate" in Australia. She was previously Mick Jagger's partner, with whom she shares four children. Another notable former partner of hers was Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry.

The couple finalized their divorce in 2022.

In 2024, Rupert Murdoch married then-67-year-old Elena Zhukova, a retired molecular biologist. Zhukova, his fifth wife, was once married to Russian billionaire Alexander Radkin Zhukov.

Earlier in March, they attended Murdoch's 95th birthday celebration together in New York City. Hugh Jackman performed at the party, and President Donald Trump sent a video message, People reported.

According to the publication, Lachlan Murdoch was also in attendance, but James and Elisabeth were not.