Rebekah Brooks, a confidante of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, announced her resignation Friday as chief executive of News International, the British arm of News Corporation, DPA reported.
Brooks is seen as one of the key figures in the phone-hacking scandal that led to last week's closure of News of the World, of which she was editor-in-chief from 2000 to 2003.
"As Chief Executive of the company, I feel a deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt and I want to reiterate how sorry I am for what we now know to have taken place," Brooks said in a statement.
"I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis. However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate," she added.
"This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past."
Brooks rose in 2009 to the top of News International, which published News of the World alongside continuing titles the Sun, the Times and Sunday Times.
Murdoch reportedly rejected previous offers by Brooks to stand down in the wake of the scandal, over allegations that News of the World illegally accessed telephone voice messages, including those of a murdered teenage girl.