Tara Darlington, right, and sister Pippa, left. Pic: Wiltshire Police

Tutors and colleagues of a Goldsmiths student who died in a car crash on Monday have paid tribute to a “future star”.

Tara Darlington, 23, was on holiday in Morocco with her sister Pippa, 21, when their rented car collided with another vehicle in Tarfaya early on Monday morning. She was studying media, journalism and sociology and had ambitions to be a reporter.

Marina Gask, who taught Tara in her news and features course, praised her as a talented student who was “also great fun.”

Gask said: “Tara Darlington was easy to teach – so easy that it felt, at times, like she was already a journalist. Full of ideas and incredibly savvy, it was clear she was going to go far.”

“She’d sometimes come to class exhausted after attending fashion events for Spashion.com, but she never gave less than her all in class.”

Tara had run a media campaign for the online sports and fashion magazine and had been offered a role in New York after her course, as well as setting up her own social media consultancy for small businesses.

In a collective statement given to EastLondonLines, Spashion’s staff said she was a “loved and valuable” member of the site.

The team said: “We are small and close-knit group and we will all greatly miss Tara and her bubbly, happy personality. It is a tragedy that is hard to come to terms with and all of us at Spashion would like to send our heart-felt condolences to the Darlington family.

“Tara was a rare and special person; we will never forget her.”

Tara and her sister Pippa, who studied law at Newcastle University, had worked hard to save up for the summer trip in before the start of Tara’s final year. A friend, Joshua Stump, 21, was seriously injured in the crash and was taken by air ambulance to a hospital in Tenerife.

Their car was travelling near the south-western town of Tarfaya when it struck a Renault Clio and then a 4×4 at approximately 5am. 9 other people were injured in the incident.

Natalie Fenton, Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, said: “Tara was an excellent student who was full of great ideas and enthusiasm for learning. The heartfelt sympathies of the entire department go out to her friends and family at this most difficult of times. ”

A packed CV including an internship for New York-based magazin Zink and ten months as an assistant designer at With Love, a women’s clothing shop, testified to Darlington’s zeal in pursuit of her ambitions.

Gask told EastLondonLines: “I was blown away by the profile she wrote of Rudi Richardson, who founded the homeless charity Streetlytes.

“Initially overwhelmed by the richness of his story and too many quotable quotes, she listened carefully to the advice and produced a genuinely moving piece of work.”

In a statement, her parents, Patrick and Emma Darlington, from Salisbury, said they were “completely devastated” by the loss, calling the sisters “best of friends”.