In 1960, Reimann began hiring outsiders to help run the business, starting with Martin Gruber, who was put in charge of buying inventory. In 1978, Gruber became the company's CEO. Three years later they hired Peter Harf, a former management consultant at Boston Consulting Group with a doctorate in economics from Cologne University.

Reimann died in 1984, leaving each of his four adopted children with a 25 percent stake in the company. Harf was appointed JAB's CEO by the Reimann heirs four years later, and has run the business ever since.

Benckiser Foundation

The four Reimanns have never been involved in the company's day-to-day management. According to the JAB spokesman, most of the billionaires are trained scientists. They run a Ludwigshafen-based charitable group called Benckiser Foundation for Youth Welfare, which set up the German branch of Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Harf led the company through an international buying binge in the late 1980s, acquiring European detergent makers Panigal SpA, SA Camp Group and Mira Lanza SpA. In 1992, the company bought Coty from Pfizer Inc. for about $440 million.

"Harf is unbelievably smart and capable," Jim Stern, chairman of Tufts University and CEO of New York-based Cypress Group LLC, said in a telephone interview on April 4. Stern befriended Harf when they were studying at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1970s. "He really is a class act."

In 1997, JAB sold shares of Benckiser NV, maker of household cleaning products Vanish and Cillit Bang, on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Two years later, the company merged with British consumer-goods outfit Reckitt & Colman Ltd. to create Reckitt Benckiser. It generated more than $15 billion in sales in 2011.

Moved to Austria

In 2006, after almost 150 years in Germany, Harf moved JAB to Austria to incorporate the firm as a Societas Europaea. A year after the move, Harf created the family's luxury retail group, Labelux. The company bought up fashion brands such as Derek Lam, Belstaff and Bally, and in May 2011, purchased shoemaker Jimmy Choo Ltd. from private-equity firm TowerBrook Capital Partners LP for about 550 million pounds ($875 million).

In November 2011, Harf hired Becht to be Coty's chairman. Becht, a 55-year-old Dutchman who ran Benckiser NV and Reckitt Benckiser from 1995 through last year, was brought on to develop strategy with Bernd Beetz, who has been the fragrance maker's CEO since 2001.