(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''WE ARE of the same breed. One of her ancestors was Attila the Hun and one of mine was Genghis Khan. We have found each other. We are on the same wavelength.'' So says Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis of West Germany about motorcycle-riding, electric-guitar-playing 29-year-old Princess Gloria, his wife. He's rich -- an inherited fortune of $2.5 billion, mostly in banking and landholdings -- and the flamboyant ''Johnny TNT,'' 63, doesn't hide it. For what good is a billion dollars stashed in a Swiss bank account if nobody knows it's there? It won't get much attention, and neither will its owner. The TNTs are stars among a subset of billionaires who think flaunting it is half the fun. Bejeweled Gloria, in her ever-changing hairdos and feathered, often grotesque hats, is a favorite of the paparazzi. This year she appeared on a TV game show, and in March the couple sailed to the Galapagos Islands on their 120-foot yacht. Later it was on to Havana to meet Johannes's friend and former university classmate Fidel Castro. Gloria's costume ball for 200 at a Paris nightclub last February was attended by the likes of Boy George and Jack Nicholson. All that attention, however, has its pitfalls, and the prince and princess of kitsch had their share this year. Unflattering tales appeared in The Andy Warhol Diaries, published in May. In July an elderly woman demanded a payment of three million German marks; in return she promised the name of a person she said was slowly poisoning the prince. She was nabbed by police when she showed up to collect. And the TNTs do have their differences. Says Johannes: ''We are fighting all the time. But we have the children, and that is all that matters.'' The children are daughters Maria Theresia and Elisabeth, and, to the prince's relief, five-year-old son Albert, the heir to his fortune. Hungarian Baron Hans Henrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, who lives in Switzerland, attracts attention mostly for his extraordinary art collection, which rivals the Queen of England's, but his five wives have been noticed too. No. 2 was an English model. Life and art meet in his current marriage, to Carmen ''Tita'' Cervera, in her late 40s, a former Miss Barcelona and Miss Spain who undressed several years ago in the German Penthouse. Tita persuaded Heini, as he's known to friends, to loan 787 of his 1,400 paintings to her native country. When the 68-year-old Heini announced plans to ensure the safekeeping of his collection beyond his own lifetime, he was courted by emissaries from Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, and France. The Prince of Wales made a personal visit. But the word is that Tita is hoping to be named a duchess. For the moment the collection is still housed in the baron's main residence, Villa Favorita, on Lake Lugano in southern Switzerland. His white Rolls-Royce, equipped with three telephones, can be found parked at the end of a cypress- lined drive. Most of the villa is open to the public, a policy Heini adopted in 1947 after the death of his father, who preferred a little more privacy. Considered a prime target for an abduction, Thyssen is constantly surrounded by a rotating crew of bodyguards -- rotation makes them less recognizable. Still, he consults a fortuneteller every morning. One way to make sure the world knows you're around is to put your name on everything. That's what Donald Trump did with the 21 planes of the Eastern Shuttle, which plies the Boston-New York-Washington trade and which he bought for $365 million. He claims it's good business: ''My name creates big play. Let's take the Trump Shuttle. When I bought that thing, it had only 7% of the market share. The week after it had 50%'' -- a number FORTUNE has been unable to verify. Trump says he's troubled by the public perception that he has a big ego. ''Sure, some of the things I do are for ego. But that has lessened so much since I first started. Now I enjoy the creative end of it and get a big kick from giving my money away. I give to AIDS research and our Vietnam vets.'' Trump says the earnings from his second book, which he's still in the process of writing, a sequel to The Art of the Deal, will also be donated to charity. Most billionaires don't announce what they're worth. Trump does. He insists it's at least $5 billion, several billion more than FORTUNE is willing to credit him with after adjusting for his debt. European television tycoon Silvio Berlusconi is another who doesn't play down his net worth. FORTUNEestimates that Berlusconi's is about $2.8 billion; his own estimates run as high as twice that figure. He's rich in terms of power as well, he points out. He has no shareholders to answer to, and no other family members with large holdings in his company, Fininvest. He says he is ''much richer'' than Giovanni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat, Italy's largest private industrial group, who has $1.7 billion. Still, Berlusconi treats his fellow Italian with considerable deference: ''I never forget that he's the emperor and I'm only a fellow who made a lot of money. I almost think he likes me.'' Berlusconi, of course, made his money in the show-and-tell world of TV. In high school he performed in a band with friends and played the big summer dance spots. When friends come to his home, he often plays the piano and croons from his 1,000-song repertoire. But Berlusconi is also a workaholic. He's not sure whether he has nine or ten homes, since he has precious little time to enjoy them. Some get attention simply because of the power they wield. Agnelli has been chairman of Fiat for 22 years. In Italy alone, the company accounts for 12% of exports. Agnelli's sister Susanna sits in Parliament and is under secretary at the Foreign Ministry. Brother Umberto, vice chairman of Fiat, has been in Parliament. While Agnelli is establishment, Sir James Goldsmith gains his notoriety by attacking it. Among his other corporate takeover efforts, Goldsmith recently made a bid for BAT Industries. Not all public attention is sought out, or even welcome. Take billionaire Tsai Wan-lin, 65% owner of Cathay Life Insurance in Taipei, a newcomer and No. 6 on our list. He hates publicity, but with a net worth of $9 billion, he's in the newspapers often. Money has been flowing into Taiwan for the past few years because of export earnings, but investment vehicles are few. So the stock market has become a national craze. Meanwhile, in an increasing acceptance of Western ways, large numbers of Taiwanese are buying life insurance for the first time. The industry is growing at an annual rate of 25%. Cathay's dominant position in its market makes it one of the most popular issues on the inflated Taipei Stock Exchange. Its stock has more than doubled in price in the past 18 months. Despite the value of his holdings, Tsai still lives in a modest apartment building a block from company headquarters, refuses interview requests, and, according to Cathay managing director Liu Chia-lin, rejected the suggestion that he trade in his 1987 Mercedes for a Rolls-Royce because ''he doesn't want to show off.'' Tsai's idea of high living is escaping to a suburban hillside villa on weekends and playing an occasional round of golf. He usually tees off alone, though, since he walks the course too fast for most partners.

The Benetton family, though they keep their private lives fairly private, also can't help being visible. And as with Trump, name recognition means business. Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto, and Carlo aim to make the Benetton label a household word from Indiana to Indonesia. Says the company president, Luciano, whose granny glasses and frizz of gray hair recall the Sixties: ''The European Community is for us a domestic market. We're paying ever closer attention to the international market that already accounts for 37% of our billings.'' Benetton's brightly colored clothing and accessories are sold in franchise stores in 79 countries. The company is negotiating a joint venture with the Soviet Union for production and distribution. With a 1989 advertising budget of $70 million, four times the 1984 figure, the Benettons have begun spending to get their message out. If you are rich and get in trouble with the law, watch out. You could turn into the ''Great White Defendant,'' to use novelist Tom Wolfe's phrase. It happened to Michael Milken, charged with racketeering, and to Harry Helmsley and his oft-pictured wife. Leona is on trial for tax fraud and extortion (Harry was excused from the proceedings because of illness), accused of charging to their business $4 million in purchases for their Connecticut mansion, including Louis XVI marble-topped dressers, a $57,000 stereo system, and a swimming enclosure. Former employees have taken the stand against the Helmsleys, portraying Leona as a penny-pinching, manipulative, unpopular boss. A former housekeeper testified that Leona once told her, ''We don't pay taxes; the little people pay taxes.'' New York City Mayor Ed Koch called Leona ''the wicked witch of the West.'' One way to avoid all the hassle is to take it on the lam. Commodity trader Marc Rich did, and has avoided trial on charges that he defrauded the U.S. of $48 million in taxes on oil trades. He's now a citizen of Spain and a resident of protective Switzerland. He has hired a staff of public relations strategists to promote a public image of Rich the philanthropist. Recipients of his generosity: the Art Museum of Zurich, the local Zug hockey team, mountain farmers, and a school for clowns. Rich himself is never far from the | social whirl. ''It's open house all winter long,'' says a frequent guest at his Swiss chalet. He's also spending more and more time at his lavish estate in Marbella, Spain, hobnobbing with pals Enrique Muijca, Spain's Minister of Justice, and Manuel Chaves, Minister of Labor. The best way to stay out of the papers is to stay out of trouble. The Marriott name is everywhere -- on some 500 hotels and 1,100 restaurants -- but as devout Mormons, family members lead lives of such boring rectitude that they are almost never mentioned except in financial journals like FORTUNE, which put J. Willard on its cover this year for his outstanding performance as a business leader.