Happy Birthday Ashley & Marie Kate Olsen
By Paula Davis

As of this Sunday, June 13, wonder twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are legal adults. The girls will be able to vote and buy cigarettes. Their 18th birthdays also mark the end of an era for the Olsen Twins Countdown Clocks, the Internet sites devoted to tracking the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the former Full House-rs come of age.

The countdown clock fad began when the twins hit their mid-teens and transformed from tween phenoms to legitimately hot celebrity babes.

Deejays Lex & Terry, a morning drive-time team based out of Jacksonville, Florida, have been using the twins', uh, flowering as a "running gag" for four years, and have been running an online Olsen Twins Countdown Clock for three. After yakking about the twins--who graduated from the Campbell Hall School in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley just days ago--for so long, Lex & Terry are celebrating Mary-Kate and Ashley's 18th birthdays in Las Vegas.

The twins will presumably not be in attendance--their reps remain tight-lipped on exactly what the duo will be doing to celebrate (our guess: counting the estimated $300 million that will be transferred into their bank accounts)--but Lex & Terry's publicist, Peter Welpton, says certain top-secret friends of the Olsens will be doing phone interviews. - E-online

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4. The Olsen Sisters

The Queens Of All Things Teen
They may have worn Fendi and Versace to their sophomore prom, but in the tween and teen fashion lines they sell through about 2,900 Wal-Mart stores nationwide (and 5,300 stores globally), the hard-driving Olsen twins take it down a couple of notches. "It's not a high-end thing," explains Robert Thorne, CEO of Dualstar Entertainment Group, parent company of all Mary-Kate and Ashley items. "We want to be available to everyone, not just the beautiful people."

It's a strategy that has paid off: the mary-kateandashley brand is the fastest-growing fashion line for tweens (ages 6 to 12) and teens in the U.S., racking up at least $400 million in sales at Wal-Mart last year. With low-priced apparel flying off the shelves in select stores in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and France, and a billion-dollar empire that includes apparel, accessories, fashion dolls, videos and DVDs, the Olsens are among the most powerful women in fashion. Their personal fortunes are estimated at $150 million each—

—By Jeanne McDowell

Ashley & Marie Kate Olsen