News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi Deng arrive for the second session of the Allen and Co. conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley
News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch (L) and his wife Wendi Deng arrive for the second session of the Allen and Co. conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho July 12, 2007. Cooperation, not mutual destruction, is a major theme at this year's summer gathering of the media and technology elite in Sun Valley. REUTERS

Who is Wendi Deng?

Wendi Deng Murdoch is Rupert Murdoch's wife.

Today Wendi Deng Murdoch shielded her husband, the head of News International, from a foam pie attack at his Parliamentary committee hearing today in the United Kingdom.

Deng Murdoch met the international news media tycoon in 1997 in Hong Kong. They married two years later, a little over two weeks after he divorced his former wife, Anna Maria Torv Murdoch.

Although Rupert and Anna's initial separation was largely due to differences about how much of a role he should continue to play in News Corp as he passed retirement age, Anna believes strongly that Wendi had a lot to do with their permanent split.

I think that Rupert's affair with Wendi Deng -- it's not an original plot -- was the end of the marriage, Anna said. His determination to continue with that. I thought we had a wonderful, happy marriage. Obviously, we didn't.

If Wendi did indeed breakup Murdoch's second marriage, it woud not have been her first time.

Wendi met her first husband, Jake Cherry, as a teenager when he and his family were in China for his work. When it was time for Cherry to return to the United States, Wendi convinced he and his wife to sponsor her as an international student so she could attend college there. The arrangement lasted until Jake's wife realized the two were having an affair and kicked them both out - after Jake confessed that he was in love with Wendi.

Wendi and Jake's subsequent marriage ended after two and half years - she left him when she decided to get an MBA at Yale, apparently claiming that she could not see Jake as any more than a father figure. (Though once source said it was because his modest salary was not enough to pay her tuition and expenses).

Wendi met Rupert Murdoch in China while she was interning at Star TV - one of his businesses. During one of Murdoch's visits there, she was assigned as his translator, and rumor is he fell for her very quickly.

Deng Murdoch, age 43, has two children-- Grace Helen Murdoch and Chloe Murdoch-with the media mogul.

Rupert Murdoch is 80 years old, some 37 years older than his wife, born in mainland China.

Today at her husband's hearing Deng Murdoch took a swing at her husband's attacker after he attempted to assault Rupert Murdoch with a foam pie.

She later swept away the foam that landed on her husband's face and embraced his head.