Barbi benton Fell in love with Aspen as a 12-year-old girl on a two-week ski vacation with her parents. The year was 1962, and she vowed to buy a place in Aspen as soon as she was old enough to sign a mortgage.

Three decades later, after a storied modeling career (while at Playboy the four-time cover girl found, and convinced beau Hugh Hefner to buy, the magazine’s namesake mansion in LA’s Holmby Hills), Benton, with husband George Gradow, finally built her Aspen dream home: The Copper Palace, a one-of-a-kind 24,000-square-foot architectural marvel on 35 acres in Starwood, next door to Saudi Prince Bandir bin Sultan.

The late Stewart Oksenhorn’s 2014 chronicle of his tour of the home (“There is no end to the strangeness,” he wrote in the first paragraph. “The house was intended to astound the senses, and it does so with unrelenting effectiveness.”) remains one of the most-viewed articles on Aspen Sojourner’s website. “Ours may be the most unusual home in Aspen,” says Benton, now 75. “If one day our children ever decide to sell, hopefully it will bring as much money as Little Lake Lodge.” That’s the Resnick estate on the market for $300 million, the most expensive listing in America.