Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng have sealed their divorce with a quick peck on the cheek.

    WENDI DENG MURDOCH and her husband Rupert Murdoch, appeared before a Manhattan judge Wednesday in a 10-minute hearing that cleared the way for ending their 14-year marriage.

    “Good luck to you both … I’m glad you were able to resolve these matters amicably,” New York State Judge Ellen Gesmer said to Deng and the media mogul after asking if they were satisfied with settlement.

    When Gesmer asked Deng and Murdoch if they understood the divorce agreement was final and it would mean they would avoid a public trial, Murdoch replied: “Indeed, yes.”

    After the session, Deng, dressed in a dark-green coat and navy skirt, crossed the courtroom to hug her soon-to-be ex-husband, the chairman of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox.

    Key details of the agreement were not revealed, but a person familiar with the terms of settlement said Deng is expected to keep the couple’s home in Beijing and their Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan, purchased in 2004 for a then-record US$44 million.

    William Zabel, an attorney for Deng, and Ira Garr, representing Murdoch, were seated next to their clients.

    Murdoch, 82, filed for divorce from Deng, 44, in June citing that their marriage had been irretrievably broken, according to his spokesman at the time. He made the move weeks before he was set to split his media and entertainment empire into two separate companies.

    While the divorce is not yet final, the procedural hearing was one of the key steps necessary for the couple to part ways.

    The split is not expected to affect operations at Fox and News Corp., which is controled by the Murdoch family trust that holds about 40 percent of the voting stock in both companies.

    Wendi Deng was born in Jinan, Shandong, and raised in Xuzhou, Jiangsu. Her birth name was Deng Wenge, which means “Cultural Revolution.” She changed it in her teens when a more open and international mood took hold. She is the third of four children (three daughters, one son) born to engineers.

    In 1987, she met an American businessman and his wife, Jake and Joyce Cherry, who had temporarily relocated to China and helped build a refrigerator factory. She studied English with Joyce Cherry. In 1988, she abandoned her medical studies in Guangzhou and traveled to the United States to study, with the couple sponsoring her student visa. Jake Cherry later became Deng’s first husband. She enrolled at California State University, Northridge, where she studied economics and was among the top students.

    She received a bachelor’s degree in economics from California State University at Northridge and an MBA from the Yale School of Management, where she currently serves on the board of advisers.

    Upon graduation from Yale, she began searching for a job, and met Bruce Churchill via a mutual friend. At that time, Churchill oversaw finance and corporate development at the Fox TV branch in Los Angeles. He subsequently offered Deng an internship at News Corp. subsidiary Star TV in Hong Kong, which developed into a full-time junior executive position.

    Though a junior employee, she took a role in working to plan Star TV’s operations in Hong Kong and Chinese mainland, and helped to build up Chinese distribution for Star’s “Channel V” music channel. Additionally, she investigated interactive TV opportunities for News Digital Systems.

    Deng first made waves when she married Murdoch in 1999, shortly after he divorced his wife of more than 30 years, Anna Torv Murdoch Mann. Since then, the couple have had two daughters together, Chloe and Grace, the youngest among his six children.

    By Murdoch’s own account in an joint interview with his wife on CCTV’s “Dialogue” program two years ago, they met at a cocktail party shortly after she graduated with an MBA from Yale and went to work in Hong Kong at Star Television as an intern.

    By then, his holdings under News Corp. included the Sunday Times, The Australian, News International, the New York Post, the Times of London, 20th Century Fox and Fox Broadcasting. His acquisition of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team would coincide with their courtship.

    A native of China, she served as his interpreter during a tour in the mainland, he said. On CCTV, Murdoch recalled the days when he pursued Wendi — a woman nearly half his age — and his efforts to get her to marry him.

    “I fell in love with her, and I asked her. She said no, and it took a long time to persuade her,” he said.

    They married after he finalized his divorce from his second wife.

    Deng’s marriage with Murdoch was her second, her marriage with Jake Cherry who sponsored her study in the United States eventually secured her a “green card” to stay permanently in the United States, but her first marriage was short-lived.

    Not much also is known about Deng’s personal life. She sits on the board of advisers at the Yale School of Management, her alma mater. She is listed as a co-founder for Big Feet Productions and also is co-producer (with Florence Sloan, friend and wife of former MGM CEO Harry Sloan) of “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” a film directed by Wayne Wang who also produced “Joy Luck Club.”

    To many, she is perhaps best known for intercepting a shaving cream pie that was pitched at Murdoch while he was testifying before the British Parliament over News Corp’s phone-hacking scandal in July 2011.

    The incident gained her the nickname “tiger wife.”(SD-Agencies)