The region had an area of 308.7 square kilometres (119.2 sq mi) and the administrative center in the city of Hertsa.

After the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859, it became part of Romania (which gained its formal independence in 1877), as one of the five districts (plăși) of Dorohoi County.

The fact that neither the secret protocol (appendix) of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which specified the expansionist claims of both sides, nor the June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanding from the Kingdom of Romania the adjacent territory of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia included Hertsa makes the capture by the Soviets controversial in Romania.

[8][9] Hertsa raion, within its boundaries at that time, had 32,316 inhabitants in 2001, including 4.83% Ukrainian-speakers, 93.82% Romanian-speakers, and 1.21% Russian-speakers.

[10] In the last Soviet census of 1989, out of 29,611 inhabitants, 1,569 declared themselves Ukrainians (5.30%), 23,539 Romanians (79.49%), 3,978 Moldovans (13.43%), and 431 Russians (1.46%).

[12] By contrast, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians has increased (from 23,539 to 29,554), and so has their proportion of the population of the former raion (from 79.49% to 91.45%), and the process has continued after the 2001 census.

[24] The number of ethnic Ukrainians in the raion increased from 1,569 to 1,616, but their percentage of the population decreased from 5.3% to 5%.