Maria Dyer (née Tarn) (c. 1803 – 21 October 1846), was a British Protestant Christian missionary to the Chinese in the Congregationalist tradition, who worked among the Chinese in Malaya.

She was the eldest daughter of Joseph Tarn, Director of London Missionary Society.

[1] Her husband died in Macau in 1843 before being able to bring his family to live in China itself at Fuzhou.

Maria Tarn was later remarried, to Johann Georg Bausum in 1845, but she died the following year at Penang, at age 43, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.

In 1853 the Society for Promotion of Female Education in the East sent Sophia Cooke to Singapore to become the Principal of what was still called the "Chinese Girls' School".