Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were thrust into the public eye in the 80s on the sitcom Full House, but what are the famous twins up to now? Born on June 13, 1986, in Sherman Oaks, California, the dynamic duo skyrocketed to stardom. In 1987, as tiny tots, the Olsens started tag-teaming as Michelle Tanner on Full House. The show wrapped in 1995, bowing out when the sisters were only 8 years old.
The twins swiftly leveraged their sitcom success into movies, with their first film, It Takes Two, hitting theaters in the same year that Full House concluded.
The film was a hit, spawning subsequent movies featuring the twins, including Two of a Kind, So Little Time, Holiday in the Sun, and New York Minute.
In the 2000s, the Olsen twins decided to step away from acting. The Olsen twins collaborated with Walmart in 2004 to launch a clothing line for girls ages 4 to 14 under their joint-owned company, Dualstar, founded in 1993. In 2007, Forbes declared the twins the 11th richest women in entertainment. With their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, raking in a cool $1 billion in merchandise sales every year.
The Olsen twins even turned down the opportunity to appear in Fuller House, the spinoff series of the sitcom that catapulted them to fame, during its run from 2016 to 2020.
However, the Olsen twins aren’t tempted to return to their acting roots now that they’re involved in fashion. “We’ve been there, we’ve done that, we started out that way,” Mary-Kate Olsen told Vogue in 2019. “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.”
In 2006, the Olssen Twins Form a Fashion Line That Now Rakes in a Fortune
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen established The Row in 2006. The brand embraces an “anti-trendiness” philosophy, emphasizing simplicity, quality, and comfort. In addition to clothing, The Row has also ventured into designing eyewear, purses, and footwear.
The brand flourished into a profitable and immensely influential enterprise. In 2019, The Business of Fashion reported that The Row was generating annual revenues of $100 to $200 million.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen paid tribute to their family by introducing a brand named Elizabeth & James, after their siblings. Established in 2007, the company offered a range of products including sunglasses, jewelry, and bags. Since 2019, Elizabeth & James has been exclusively available at Kohl’s.
In 2015, at the age of 29, Mary-Kate Olsen married French banker Olivier Sarkozy, who is the half-brother of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. However, in 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Olsen filed for divorce.
Meanwhile, Ashley Olsen is married to Louis Eisner, an artist and the son of jewelry designer Lisa Eisner. They got married in 2022 and now live in New York City. In early 2023, Ashley and Eisner welcomed their first child, a son named Otto.