htaccess under different virtualhosts

[ghell]

my httpd.conf looks something like this:

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerName *
  DocumentRoot /var/www
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerName example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerName subdomain.example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/subdomain
</VirtualHost>

I want to make a /var/www/subdomain/.htaccess and have it work on subdomain.example.com.

However, it seems to just ignore it. I've tried adding the contents of the .htaccess directly into the virtualhost in httpd.conf and restarting apache but it didn't work there either.

It does work fine if I go to example.com/subdomain


How can I get it to use the .htaccess when under this subdomain?


(Apache 2.2 under Debian)