Herbert Ward was a British sculptor, illustrator, writer, and explorer in Africa. He was a member of Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition and became a close friend of Roger Casement while they were working in the Congo Free State. Ward later became a sculptor and lived in France. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, was twice mentioned in dispatches in World War I, was an officer of the Légion d'Honneur and a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1887 to 1889 was one of the last major European expeditions into the interior of Africa in the nineteenth century. Led by Henry Morton Stanley, its goal was ostensibly the relief of Emin Pasha, the besieged Egyptian governor of Equatoria, who was threatened by Mahdist forces.