Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen made their start as child actors

Born on June 13, 1986, in Sherman Oaks, California, the fraternal twins quickly became stars. In 1987, when they were infants, the Olsens began sharing the role of Michelle Tanner on Full House.

The show ran until 1995, ending when the twins were eight years old. John Stamos, one of their co-stars on the sitcom, recently admitted that he briefly had the Olsens fired from the show when they were babies.

“They were 11 months old, and god bless them. [The producers] kept switching: ‘This one’s not gonna cry.’ I couldn’t deal with it. And I said, ‘This is not gonna work.’ And so they got rid of them,” Stamos told hosts Josh Peck and Ben Soffer on the podcast Good Guys in April.

“It was only a few days, and I said, ‘Bring the Olsens back! These kids are terrible.’”

Their acting careers took off, and the twins co-starred in popular films geared towards children.

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Their work following Full House includes Two of a Kind, So Little Time, Holiday in the Sun and New York Minute.

It Takes Two, released the same year that Full House wrapped up, is the twins’ top-rated movie, according to audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

But the Olsen twins, now 36, haven’t acted since the early 2010s. They even declined to appear in Fuller House – the spin-off series of the sitcom that propelled them into the limelight – when it ran between 2016 and 2020.

“We’ve been there, we’ve done that, we started out that way,” Mary-Kate said. “But this is the way we chose to move forward in our lives: to not be in the spotlight, to really have something that speaks for itself.”

They became teen fashion icons …

They began their transition into the fashion industry in 2004, when they were still teenagers. The Olsen twins launched a clothing line for girls ages four to 14 in collaboration with Walmart in 2004. They launched the line under their joint-owned fashion and entertainment company, Dualstar, which they founded in 1993.

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They moved to New York City and both enrolled in New York University in 2004, although they later dropped out.

According to the LA Times, they bought a US$7.3 million, 5,700 sq ft condo in the West Village when they moved to New York.

… Then launched fashion brand The Row

In 2006, the Olsens founded The Row, which The Business of Fashion called “one of New York’s most high-profile young brands”.

In 2021, Mary-Kate told i-D about the twins’ intentions behind the brand, saying, “It had to be easy. It had to be comfortable on all bodies. It really had to have all the elements that we continue to put into our projects and design. The fabrics had to be luxurious and perfect and, hopefully, have longevity.”

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In 2019, the Business of Fashion reported that The Row was bringing in between US$100 million and US$200 million in sales annually.

Despite their early introduction to the limelight, they were reluctant to become the faces of their brand.

“We didn’t want to be in front of it, we didn’t necessarily even want to let people know it was us,” Ashley told i-D in 2021. “It was really about the product, to the point where we were like, who could we get to front this so that we don’t have to?”

In the same interview, Mary-Kate called herself and her sister “discreet people”.

And they have even more fashion ventures

In 2007, the Olsen twins founded a second line, Elizabeth & James, named after two of their siblings.

Their sister Elizabeth has her own successful acting career, and is perhaps best known for her role as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

James, who goes by his middle name Trent, is a comic-book writer and works in movie production, according to Cosmopolitan. They also have two half-siblings, Courtney Taylor and Jake.

The company sold sunglasses, jewellery and bags. Starting in 2019, Elizabeth & James began being sold exclusively at Kohl’s.

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The twins launched another brand in 2009, which they also named to honour their family. Olsenboye, a clothing line for teens and tweens that was sold exclusively at JCPenney, was named using the Norwegian version of their last name.

How they’re expanding their empires – and fortunes

In 2007, Forbes ranked the twins, then 20, as the 11th richest women in entertainment, reporting that their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, had been selling US$1 billion worth of merchandise annually. Forbes also noted that the twins were featured in advertisements for the upscale fashion brand Badgley Mischka.

While their more recent net worth is not known, in 2017, the Olsens were on the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 All-Star Alumni list, in which the magazine chose individuals who it believes are “leading the millennial revolution of game changers”.

Elizabeth & James is their more affordable line. The Row carries a variety of styles of jeans, but a pair of their Egli Boyfriend Denim Jeans in particular cost US$790 on Bergdorf Goodman’s website in May.

But that’s just the beginning – The Row sells coats that cost over US$13,000, while a belted, quilted leather coat costs US$13,500 on Net-a-Porter, as of May 2023.

Items on The Row’s website range in price from a US$450 scooped-neck jersey T-shirt to a US$29,000 alligator-skin bag made in Italy.

They’re award-winning fashion gurus

The Row and the Olsens have received various prestigious awards. In 2012 and 2015, the Council of Fashion Designers of America presented them with the womenswear designers of the year award.

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They won CFDA’s accessory designer of the year award in 2014, 2018 and 2019.

But what about their love lives?

Their private lives have also made headlines.

Mary-Kate, then 29, married then-46-year-old French banker Olivier Sarkozy – the half-brother of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy – in 2015. In 2020, during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, she filed for divorce. In 2022, their shared Manhattan town house sold for US$10.5 million, according to the New York Post.

Ashley is currently married to artist Louis Eisner. According to Radar, they began dating in 2017. They tied the knot in 2022 and live in New York City.