Herbert Valentine Tarte (1876–1936) was a Fijian planter and politician. He served in the Legislative Council in the early 1920s.
Biography Tarte was born in 1876 in the Taveuni village of Vatu Wiri, the oldest son of Clarissa and James Valentine Tarte,R. McMillan, (1907) The Cyclopedia of Fiji: a complete historical and commercial review of Fiji, p291 who had settled in Taveuni in 1868.James Valentine Tarte Pacific Islands Monthly, August 1981, pp73–74 He was educated at Brighton Grammar School in Melbourne and then worked for the Imperial Insurance Company for a year. He subsequently worked for Swan Hill and a stock and station business, before joining the family business. This became Tarte Brothers of Taveuni, and held 10% of the copra market in the mid-1920s.Bessie Ng Kumlin Ali (2002) Chinese in Fiji, p119 He married the daughter of senior civil servant James Thomas.
In 1920 he was elected to the Legislative Council from the Vanua Levu & Taveuni constituency. After being elected, he introduced a motion for Chinese labour to be recruited, which failed.Ng Kumlin Ali, p57 He did not complete a full term, with William Edmund Willoughby-Tottenham elected to replace him in October 1922.
He died in Melbourne in 1936.Mrs Clara Tarte Auckland Star, 17 December 1936, p3
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