Jennifer Eckhart
Jennifer Eckhart

HOBE SOUND, Fla. — Jennifer Eckhart, a former Fox Business associate producer who later hosted a podcast on recovery and sued a onetime Fox News anchor, was found dead at her home here on Sept. 19. She was 36.

The Martin County Sheriff's Office said her mother found her and called authorities. She was pronounced dead at 11:57 a.m. Spokesperson Christine Christofek said Monday, "This death has been ruled a suicide."

Sheriff John Budensiek said at a Sept. 21 briefing that Eckhart had been held six times in 18 months under Florida's Baker Act, which allows a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation. "She spent a seven-week period in a mental health facility trying to get help for all her suicidal ideology," he said, "and had been out of that facility for one week." He said investigators found she had stopped her medication and written in a personal ledger that she needed to kill herself.

The incident report obtained by USA Today described the scene. The office's criminal investigations unit and crime-scene staff responded. The medical examiner's office confirmed the death to Entertainment Weekly.

Eckhart joined Fox Business in 2013 after work as an ESPN Radio correspondent and as an entertainment anchor at a Gainesville PBS station. She also worked at Fox News and Fox Nation. She left in 2020.

That year she sued Ed Henry, then an "America's Newsroom" co-anchor, and Fox News. She alleged rape and other sexual misconduct. Henry denied the claims and said any relationship was consensual. Fox fired him in July 2020 after an outside inquiry into a sexual-misconduct complaint. A federal judge dismissed Fox from Eckhart's suit in March 2025. Henry settled in June 2025, days before trial. He later joined Newsmax.

After the settlement she said: "This has been an exhaustive, re-traumatizing, five-year legal battle with incredible challenges that at times I almost felt was unable to bear."

She launched "Reinvented with Jen Eckhart," a podcast of interviews with people who had rebuilt after setbacks. The latest episode posted in March featured former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg. She also spoke about nonprofit work for trauma survivors.

In July 2025 she was arrested in Palm Beach County on a battery charge after an alleged fight with a boyfriend; prosecutors dropped the case for insufficient evidence. In February a Florida couple and their lash salon filed a $1 million defamation suit accusing her of linking them to sex trafficking. That case's status after her death was unclear.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available in the United States by calling or texting 988.

Eckhart was 36. She is survived by her mother, Cynthia Eckhart. A public funeral notice had not been issued in Monday's reports. The sheriff's ruling closed the death investigation on paper. It did not close the record of a producer who left a network, sued an anchor, settled, and tried to build a second act on a podcast about starting over.