This dataset contains coral cover data describing the context within which denisty-dependence (DD) was measured on the island of Moorea, French Polynesia, including data describing the benthic community, diameters of Pocillopora spp. measured in photoquadrats, surveys of corals and recruits. These data correspond to figures 1 through 3 in the manuscript by PJ Edmunds, L. Bramanti, and H.R. Nelson, 'Density-dependence mediates coral community structure', Ecology, 99(11), 2018, pp. 2605-2613. This ata set was revised on 27 November 2018. The data managed for Fig. 3 were missing values for two quadrats used in the analysis (quadrats 24 and 9). In this data revision, the values from the missing quadrats have been included. The reefs of Mo’orea, French Polynesia, provide the opportunity to study DD of coral population growth, because coral assemblages in this location responded to declines in abundance with high recruitment and an increase in cover during which recruitment of pocilloporid corals was inversely associated with density. This study tests for DD in this system, first, by describing the context within which it operates: coral cover changed from 46% in 2005, to less than 1% in 2010 following an outbreak of a corallivorous sea star and a cyclone, and then increased to 74% by 2017, in large part through inverse density- associated pocilloporid recruitment. Second, a test for DD of recruitment was conducted by decreasing Pocillopora spp. cover from 33% to 19%: one year later, the density of Pocillopora spp. recruits was 1.65-fold higher in the low versus high cover treatment. Finally, the effects of DD were investigated by comparing simulated and empirical distributions of pocilloporid colonies: as predicted by DD, small colonies were randomly distributed, while large colonies were uniformly distributed. Together these results demonstrate DD of population regulation for Pocillopora spp. corals, thus revealing the potential importance of this ecological principle in determining the resilience of coral assemblages.