Meg Whitman is stepping down as chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise six years after joining its corporate predecessor and leading a turnaround effort that split the Silicon Valley corporate icon in two.

Ms. Whitman, 61, will retire in February, the company said on Tuesday. She will be succeeded by Antonio Neri, 50, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s president.

Ms. Whitman took the helm at Hewlett-Packard in 2011, nine months after joining the company’s board, following her failed bid in 2010 to become the governor of California. She had spent more than $100 million of her own money on her Republican campaign, losing to Jerry Brown, a Democrat.

At Hewlett-Packard, Ms. Whitman inherited an aging, troubled company and delivered mixed results. She oversaw rounds of cost-cutting and then decided to break up the company. Ms. Whitman went with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which took the business software and hardware operations of the parent company. The other half of the company, HP Inc., houses the printer and personal computer business.