Hi Wendi,
I think that you have mentioned that you have a VPS. If so, you should be able to move your moodledata folder back one level and get it out of public_html. This is really what you should do, and its a good thing to learn how to do. When you log is as a user to your VPS to manage it, most often you are put at a level right below public_html.
One way to tell if you have an .htaccess. is from your browser, try to go to a folder directly (a folder that has some files in it.) For example, on my website, you could try going to www.rjerz.com/c. This is a real location with many files in it, but your browser will give you an error message because I have a .htaccess file, which works. If you see your file names and folders, you probably do not have a correctly configured .htaccess file.
If you search google for .htaccess, you will find many hits for it. .htaccess can be pretty technical, but one of its main functions is to not expose your files and folders to the world.
Having said all of this, I am just sharing my experience with you. I am not the technical expert, but others, like Howard and Ken for example, are really good with this stuff.
Realize that any file that begins with a period is sometime hidden, depending upon how you are looks at your files. But if you are SSH'ing into your server with a terminal application, you will see it. When I FTP to my VPS from my Mac, I don't see files starting with a period.
Yes, your site could be without one. .htaccess, I believe, is optional.
Moodle does put a .htaccess file into my moodledata folder, and I see it. I think this always happens during an install of Moodle, but not sure. Howard might be able to verify this.
I forget, are you managing your VPS with cPanel only, FTP, SSH, or by some other method? Doing what you need to do can sometimes be done easier with SSH. Knowing what you use will help us advise you.