It's possible it's a fuse. On my older Acura I would hear the blower motor at anything higher than the lowest setting so the noise symptom my not mean much. Or, it could mean it was about to fail.
If you can locate the blower motor and the terminals you can bypass the HVAC control and supply Pos and Neg directly from the battery to see if it runs. It will operate on the same 12v as everything else.
Good luck.