Jennifer Eckhart, a former Fox Business associate producer who later became a podcast host and advocate for trauma survivors, has died at the age of 36.

Eckhart was found dead at her Florida home on Saturday, September 19, according to an incident report from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office obtained by PEOPLE. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office confirmed that her death was ruled a suicide. The news was first reported by TMZ.

Her death has prompted renewed attention to a complicated chapter of her life that included a career in television, a highly publicized legal dispute, and years of advocacy on behalf of people who had experienced trauma.

For many who followed her work, however, Eckhart’s story was not defined solely by the lawsuit that brought her into the public spotlight.

In the years that followed, she worked to create a new professional identity centered on advocacy, conversation and support for trauma survivors.

She founded The Reinvented Project, launched a podcast called REINVENTED with Jen Eckhart, and used her public platform to speak about difficult subjects while encouraging others to find their own paths forward.

Her death now marks the end of a life that, particularly in its later years, was focused on transforming a painful personal experience into work intended to help others.

A Career in Television

Before becoming widely known because of her legal case, Eckhart worked in television.

She spent years at Fox Business, where she worked as an associate producer. According to PEOPLE, she worked at the network for seven years.

Television production is often built around work that viewers never see.

Producers and associate producers help prepare programs, coordinate information and contribute to the process that eventually becomes the finished broadcast. Eckhart’s career developed in that environment before her name became associated with a much larger public conversation about workplace power and sexual misconduct.

Her professional life changed dramatically in 2020.

That year, Eckhart publicly accused former Fox News anchor Ed Henry of sexual assault and filed a lawsuit describing her allegations. Henry denied the accusations and maintained that their relationship had been consensual.

The case became highly publicized and remained part of Eckhart’s life for years.

The 2020 Lawsuit

Eckhart’s lawsuit described allegations involving Henry and raised broader questions about workplace power and the challenges faced by employees who make serious complaints against colleagues with influential positions.

Eckhart said publicly at the time that she had been afraid that Henry’s position and influence could affect her career.

In remarks from 2020, she described feeling afraid to speak out and said she believed that doing so could have consequences for her professional future.

Henry repeatedly denied her allegations.

Fox News fired Henry in July 2020 after the network received Eckhart’s complaint and conducted an internal investigation. At the time, Fox News said it had taken action after learning of Eckhart’s claims and stated that there had been no previous sexual-harassment complaints against Henry at the network before her complaint.

The legal case continued long after the initial allegations became public.

Eckhart also named Fox News as a defendant, alleging that the company had failed to protect her and had not adequately addressed the conduct she described.

The network disputed those claims.

The Case Against Fox News

The legal proceedings became lengthy and complicated.

In March 2025, a federal judge dismissed Fox News as a defendant in the case. According to PEOPLE’s reporting, the ruling found that Eckhart had not established that Fox was aware of Henry’s alleged conduct before she brought her complaint.

 

The dismissal represented an important development in the litigation, but it did not end the broader legal dispute involving Eckhart and Henry.

The case against Henry continued.

Eventually, in June 2025, Eckhart and Henry reached a settlement.

The settlement ended the five-year legal battle without the civil trial that Eckhart had anticipated. PEOPLE reported that the parties resolved the case and that Henry’s attorney described the matter as resolved to the parties’ mutual satisfaction.

Because a settlement is not the same as a trial verdict, the allegations and denials remained distinct positions in the public record.

Eckhart, however, described the settlement as an important personal turning point.

A Five-Year Legal Battle

In 2025, Eckhart spoke publicly about the toll the legal process had taken on her.

She described the five-year dispute as exhausting and retraumatizing, while also saying that the settlement lifted a significant weight from her shoulders.

For anyone involved in a long legal proceeding, the end of a case does not necessarily mean that the emotional effects disappear immediately.

In Eckhart’s situation, the lawsuit had become intertwined with a major part of her adult life.

The case had brought public attention to her allegations, but it also placed her personal experiences under intense scrutiny.

After the settlement, she began emphasizing another part of her identity.

She wanted to help other people who had experienced trauma.

That effort became a major focus of her later work.

Turning Advocacy Into a New Mission

Eckhart founded The Reinvented Project, a nonprofit focused on supporting trauma survivors through animal-assisted therapy.

She also created the podcast REINVENTED with Jen Eckhart, which she described as a platform intended to give a voice to people who might otherwise struggle to be heard.

The podcast allowed her to explore difficult subjects through conversations with guests from different backgrounds.

Among those guests was musician Billy Corgan, who spoke with Eckhart about topics including generational trauma.

The conversations demonstrated that Eckhart’s interests had expanded beyond her own legal experience.

She was interested in the broader ways difficult experiences can affect individuals and families over time.

Her advocacy was based on the idea that people could continue building meaningful lives after traumatic events.

She often spoke about taking painful experiences and using them as motivation to help others.

One phrase became particularly associated with the message she shared publicly:

“I turned pain into purpose.”

For Eckhart, the statement represented an effort to create something constructive from an experience that had profoundly affected her life.

Finding Meaning Outside the Courtroom

One of Eckhart’s recurring messages was that a survivor’s sense of worth should not depend entirely on what happens inside a courtroom.

After the settlement, she said survivors did not necessarily need courtroom validation to become stronger than the experiences that had harmed them.

That perspective became an important part of the work she pursued afterward.

Her legal case had involved allegations, denials, court proceedings and years of uncertainty.

Her advocacy work allowed her to focus on something different.

Instead of concentrating only on what had happened in the past, she could talk about what people might do with their lives afterward.

The Reinvented Project reflected that approach.

So did her podcast.

Her work increasingly centered on conversations about trauma, resilience and the complicated process of rebuilding one’s identity after difficult experiences.

Her Final Public Message

Eckhart’s final Instagram post was shared on June 1, several months before her death.

In the post, she appeared in Florida and joked about returning to social media after being away for some time.

She wrote that she was happy to be sharing again and said she was working on projects she was excited to reveal.

The post gave followers a glimpse of someone who appeared to be looking ahead professionally.

That makes the news of her death especially difficult for those who followed her work.

At the time, her public message was focused on returning to social media and upcoming projects.

There was no public indication in that post of what would happen months later.

Her death therefore came as a profound shock to people who knew her personally and professionally and to members of the survivor-advocacy community who had followed her work.

Remembering More Than the Headlines

Since her death was reported, people who knew Eckhart and worked with her have begun remembering her beyond the headlines surrounding the lawsuit.

Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who appeared on Eckhart’s podcast in 2022, paid tribute to her and highlighted her courage in coming forward and her efforts to support others.

Other people connected to Eckhart’s advocacy work have also shared memories.

The tributes have emphasized different parts of her personality and life, including her work as an advocate, her relationships with others and her efforts to help people who had experienced trauma.

Those memories are important because public figures can easily become reduced to a single headline.

For Eckhart, that headline was often the lawsuit.

But her professional life was larger than that case.

She had worked in television.

She had built a podcast.

She had created a nonprofit.

She had interviewed guests about difficult personal experiences.

And she had attempted to build a platform where other people could speak about their own stories.

A Story That Became Bigger Than One Lawsuit

The legal battle changed Eckhart’s life, but her response to that experience became another important part of her story.

Rather than continuing solely as a figure in a legal dispute, she developed a new role as an advocate.

Her nonprofit and podcast reflected that transformation.

She used her own public experience to begin conversations about subjects that are often difficult to discuss openly.

That work did not erase what she had experienced.

Instead, it gave her another direction.

For survivors of trauma, rebuilding can take many different forms.

For some people, it may mean returning to work.

For others, it can involve therapy, community, advocacy, creative projects or simply finding a new routine.

Eckhart chose public advocacy.

She created spaces for conversations that she believed could help people feel less isolated.

The Importance of Compassion After Trauma

Eckhart’s story also highlights a broader issue: the effects of trauma can be complicated and can continue long after a particular event or legal proceeding has ended.

A court case may have a beginning and an end.

Human emotions do not always follow the same timeline.

For people dealing with traumatic experiences, support can come from many sources, including trusted friends and family, professional counselors, support organizations and community resources.

Eckhart’s work with The Reinvented Project reflected her belief that healing could involve creating new connections and finding meaningful ways to move forward.

Her advocacy efforts cannot be separated from the difficult experiences she had publicly described, but neither should her entire identity be reduced to those experiences.

She was also a producer, interviewer, entrepreneur and advocate.

A Life Remembered Through Her Work

Jennifer Eckhart was 36 years old when she died.

Her life included a television career, a highly publicized legal case and a later period devoted to advocacy.

The legal dispute with Ed Henry ultimately ended in a settlement in 2025.

The litigation involving Fox News also resulted in the network being dismissed as a defendant.

Those legal outcomes are part of the public record, but they do not tell the whole story of the person behind the case.

In the years following the lawsuit, Eckhart tried to build something new.

Through The Reinvented Project and her podcast, she sought to create conversations around trauma and to support people who felt unheard.

Her final public post spoke about returning to social media and working on projects she was excited to share.

She never got the opportunity to share those future projects.

Now, those who remember her are left looking back at the work she had already created.

A Difficult Story With a Human Being at Its Center

The circumstances of Eckhart’s death are difficult to discuss, and the public should be mindful of the impact that detailed descriptions of suicide can have on people who may already be struggling.

What can be remembered is that her life contained many chapters.

She was a young woman who built a career in television.

She became involved in a major legal battle after publicly accusing a former colleague of sexual assault, allegations he denied.

She spent years navigating the legal system.

She eventually settled the case.

Then she devoted herself to supporting other trauma survivors.

That final chapter is an important part of her legacy.

Eckhart spoke frequently about giving people a voice.

She created a nonprofit.

She hosted conversations.

She interviewed people about difficult subjects.

And she tried to turn her own experiences into something that might help others.

Her death does not erase that work.

For those who knew her or followed her advocacy, the hope is that the conversations she started will continue.

Jennifer Eckhart was 36.

She leaves behind a complicated public story, a body of advocacy work and people who remember her not simply for the lawsuit that made her widely known, but for the efforts she made afterward to help others find their voices.

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts or emotional distress in the United States can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. People affected by sexual assault can contact RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) for confidential support.