Generate a password

htpasswd -Bn firstname.lastname

This will ask you for a password and use bcrypt (-B, more secure) and print the output to stdout (-n).

Check if password matches the hash

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You'll first have to write the password hash to a file:

echo firstname.lastname:$2y$05$4JXxd2GM/J2...9c3KJmFS > htpass_test

Check, if it is correct:

htpasswd -v htpass_test firstname.lastname

You probably should not use the -b switch to read the password from the command line as the password will then be visible in your .bash_history (alternatively use the command with a leading space so the command will not appear in the history).