Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, the 103-year-old mother of the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the widow of an Australian newspaper baron and one of her nation’s most noted philanthropists, died on Wednesday at her estate near Melbourne.

Mr. Murdoch announced her death.

Elisabeth Joy Greene was just a teenager, a shy, obedient girl of privilege, rail thin and fashionably coiffed (though not long out of pigtails), when she was introduced to Keith Murdoch in 1927. He was 42, already a wealthy, famous and worldly newspaperman destined to become one of Australia’s foremost publishers. He had seen her debutante picture in a society magazine and had come courting.