I did have an "|| &error; " appended to the use statement, but it still returned an error. I assume it's a fatal error (thus leading me to believe that the module is not present), however I will try some alternatives to see if I can pinpoint why I recieve that error.

No luck with the "manual" creation of .htpasswd files. I double checked to make sure that the .htaccess is pointing to the created file for "AuthUserFile". Perhaps permissions need to be set?