plugin / hack to use htpasswd for standard WP authentication?

I’m hoping to find a way to have WordPress recognize the users in a .htpasswd file as subscribers, so they can use the login function of WordPress and NOT the Apache htaccess authenication module.

That is to say I’ll just remove .htaccess, but I want WordPress to let everone in .htpasswd log in as subscribers.

Ideally, I’d want to use a plugin, but I’d be willing (and marginally capable) of editing wp-login.php. worst case scenario would be adding user info from the .htpasswd file to the standard user table(s) within WordPress.

Thanks!