Ellen Levine, Good Housekeeping’s first female top editor, whose keen sense of what American women wanted from a magazine also led her to success as Hearst Magazines’ editorial director and Oprah Winfrey’s partner in creating an instant newsstand hit, O, the Oprah Magazine, died on Nov. 6 at her home in Manhattan. She was 76.

Ms. Levine massaged Good Housekeeping’s  mix of diet, entertaining and relationship advice, broadening the appeal to working mothers with consumer-oriented reporting — articles about social and political issues, and coverage of career matters like pay equity, and health topics like smoking, heart disease and mental illness.

She was cleareyed about who her mass-market readers were. “I’m not editing for the person addicted to high-fashion magazines,” she told The New York Times in 2003. She knew her audience.