His family professed Communist beliefs, and Hue, as a child, sold issues of the Party newspaper, L'Humanité.

He studied at the technical school in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, sang in a rock band called Les Rapaces under the alias Willy Barton, and practiced judo (winning an intercollegiate medal and receiving a black belt nidan).

Close to Georges Marchais, Hue climbed the steps in the Party hierarchy, being also elected mayor of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles in 1977.

In February 1981, he was brought briefly under the spotlight, by starting a campaign against a family of immigrants, whom he had accused of selling drugs (a "charge" that was based mainly on hearsay).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, faced with the rapid erosion of his party, Robert Hue started a series of political transformations: openness to other political movements, discarding of several doctrines, a double-headed Party executive (with Hue as president and Marie-George Buffet as national secretary), etc.

Robert Hue's low percentage in 1995 is explained by the competition from Workers' Struggle, but it was still more than André Lajoinie's result in 1988.

In 1997, he stood by the idea of Gauche Plurielle ("Pluralist Left") which brought the leftist politics back in power with Lionel Jospin; Hue became a deputy, and the government included a number of Communists.

The poor result in 2002 made the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen cheer the death of Communist strength.

In fact, the outcome was so bad that the Party did not have anything to show for the money it had invested in its campaign, and verged on financial collapse.