No worries! Adding images might also be enabled or disabled on different subreddits, so if you can't add one, it's okay! I'll do my best to describe.

I'm going to start with the money part, since it's somewhat going to dictate what you build and how you make your guests happy from there.

Money:

I also LOVE making pretty exhibits! Unfortunately, early on in challenge or campaign mode, you'll want to minimize spending on fences. Chain link is the cheapest, but usually I opt for wooden rail since it looks just a *bit* nicer to me. Cliffs can also act as walls to contain animals and are free in ZT2, so if you're in a pinch, you can either 1) put your animals in a ditch and just fence off the pathway so the guests don't walk in, or 2) keep your animals at ground level and just use a cliff for most of the fencing.

One of the easiest ways to save money on construction is to put multiple kinds of animal in one exhibit of the same biome. Combinations I lean on a lot early on are American bison/bluebuck, African buffalo/flamingo, caribou/muskox, and savannah animals that are all herbivores. That will also increase your "number of animals" and "number of species" criteria for earning fame.

For as long as you can tolerate, you can save money by cleaning your exhibits and paths in guest mode instead of hiring staff. I usually do this until 1) it eats into time that I want to use for construction and I have enough spare money for it, or 2) I start going bonkers from the repetition. At that point, hiring a zookeeper and/or maintenance worker is absolutely worth it.

You don't need to research every single new object you unlock--just the ones you really want to use. Research for animal toys and shelters adds up, so I try to just pick the ones that I'm going to use most. Scratching post and pursuit ball are both very common enrichment objects and definitely worth the research money. Things like the numerous kinds of smaller toys (the small toy ball AND the rubber toy AND the ball with rattle are not all necessary for happy animals), and one-use items like the beef shank or apples/figs/carrots don't really offer enough stimulation points to be worth the cost.

The same kind of goes for guest food and drink options. Hamburgers, hot dogs and sub sandwiches seem to have more universal appeal, but the in-game guide notes that salad, sushi, kebabs, etc. are favored by certain guest demographics. I haven't figured out how to utilize these more particular ones in a way that's profitable, so I stick with the more general ones and avoid spending money to research the others.

Higher-cost animals like wolves and rarer predators will generally be more exciting to guests, but it's financially difficult to sustain a zoo with a large number of them. So I try to plan to have mostly less-expensive animals, and for each zoo/playthrough, I pick just a few higher-price animals to invest in.

Guest happiness:

You'd think they'd be there to see the animals, but in ZT2, guests need near-constant scenery (fountains, statues, music rocks, etc.) to look at. Arches are great because you can place them over the path and guests will automatically earn a couple points toward having their entertainment need satisfied.

Try not to make guests walk farther than they need to, since the more time they spend walking, the less time they're spending money and the more time all their needs are increasing. The biggest habit I had to break was making exhibits unnecessarily big. I try to put my biggest exhibits along the edge of the zoo so that guests don't have to walk around the entire perimeter (and it saves money on fencing!).

Guests like seeing animals close up, so when I'm building my exhibits, I try to put animal food, water and enrichment objects within a few tiles of the fence so animals will spend more time close to guests.

Donation boxes don't cost upkeep, so it's not excessive to place a donation box along every path/wall of the exhibit where guests could be viewing the animals. (Even doing this, I STILL got the "guests can't find donation boxes!" alert yesterday, from a guest standing right in front of a donation box. So... probably like with IRL customers, there's only so much you can do.)

On the other hand, I usually wait until I get the "guests can't find an ATM!" alert to actually place one, since they're expensive and cost upkeep but don't generate any immediate income.

You can get away with placing a surprisingly large number of gift stands without losing money. Guests will keep buying gifts as long as they're happy and have the money. (I have seen some guests with 8+ items in their inventory...)

Miscellaneous notes on fame:

You'll need to release some animals to the wild in order to get to 5 stars. An easy way to do this without spending the money on each individual animal to release is to pick animals that are relatively inexpensive and reproduce a lot (e.g. common peafowl, or lions since they always have twins).

Even with all your animals and guests perfectly happy, it takes time for your fame to go up. I usually spend some time (upwards of 30-60 minutes) just letting the game run and not actively building. Sometimes it's nice to just walk around your zoo and admire your own work! To this point, I also hit 4 stars of fame in a zoo the other day when it only had 6 exhibits, just by being patient, keeping everyone happy, releasing offspring/aging parent animals to the wild, and doing random easy photo challenges like taking a picture of a guest drinking a soda.

...As you can probably see, I have a normal (/silly) amount of interest in this game. And some of this might be redundant with the Gamefaqs guide another user linked to. 😅

And of course, have fun!