Beauty and the Beast is a fairy tale about a man who is turned into a horrific beast by a witch, and to be turned back into his human form must fall in love. While the Beast’s makeup isn’t really that important to the story, in the Disney version his appearance seems to be a combination of animals- which it is.
The supervising animator in the Disney film, Glen Keane, describes the beast as being not based off of one animal, but being a chimaera, meaning he is multiple animals. Specifically, he has the head structure and horns of a buffalo, the arms and body of a bear, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the mouth and mane of a lion, the tusks of a wild boar and the legs and tail of a wolf. He’s also meant to resemble a cross between a minotaur and a werewolf.